


hanging on the edge of nothing

by popstarvsradio (coincidental)



Category: BBC Radio 1 RPF, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Infidelity, Kid Fic, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-04-25 19:47:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4973749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coincidental/pseuds/popstarvsradio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“Didn’t you know he was coming?” Douglas asks again. Nick shakes his head. Aimee bloody well should have told him. Though, maybe he’d hidden the ache and the scar Harry left on him too well, maybe even Aimee didn’t know. Maybe she thinks it would be good for him – somehow that seems more likely.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>  <em>Any illusions Nick is still maintaining about his so called ‘past’ feelings for Harry die as Harry bumbles over and pulls Nick into a half hug. It’s like the past five years never happened apparently. </em></p><p>Harry is not the same as the boy Nick fell in love with once, but he's still Harry and maybe Nick is still in love with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. don't believe in being lonely

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't honestly written in a long time and when it comes to this fandom I usually draw... But, this all came about because of an Adele song - tragic but true.
> 
> Have to extend my endless thanks to [meowsaystheemo](http://archiveofourown.org/users/meowsaystheemo), who reads this stuff and tells me it's decent enough for the rest of fandom to read it too. She's also the terrible enabler who dragged me into this ship, and I love her for it.

_I don't believe in being lonely_  
_Old electric lady lands_  
_Playing in the stars around me_  
_Drunk in the arms of your gorgeous memory_  
_Lured in by the lovely way_  
_You keep showing up in mystery_

 

It's not that their little crew don't see each other any more, it's just... quieter. They've dwindled to smaller gatherings, working around partners and children and careers, such grown up and strange things that had once seemed awfully unfamiliar. To Nick, they still are. 

He always half supposed that he would fall into something like that when he was ready to, meet some nice boy he could introduce to his parents with a smile and no hesitation, someone he woke up happy to see in the morning, someone who liked his dog and didn’t mind his working hours or his whining. He kept supposing it would happen, and it just didn’t. 

He dated, oh of course he did, on and off, and ended things prematurely with an alarming regularity that he refused to address and didn’t let his friends poke holes in either. He just finds things wrong with them every time, even though he doesn’t mean to. These days, in the midst of the sea of couples he calls his friends, he maintains casual relationships at best. He’s not lonely, not really, just a little… tired of it all. 

It’s this sort of thing that makes him reluctant to turn up at the barbecue Aimee has thrown. God knows the woman is still his best friend in the world but she’s so bloody happily married to Ian and they have their baby and their dog and Nick… well, Nick has a dog. That’s about it. Also, he just _knows_ everybody else will be there with their other halves and their settled little lives and he’ll get that stupid feeling he’s missing something even though he’s not.

Nick has toyed with the whole settling down thing when still basking in the early glow of liking someone, playing pretend in his head, dreaming up joint bank accounts and a little house together and all those sorts of things. Those imaginings usually popped like soap bubbles with the same short pop and inevitable unpleasant mess left afterwards. They were never the right person to imagine forever with.  

Honestly, he’d only imagined settling down for real, with a clarity that had worried him even then, with exactly one person ever and it… it was just never going to happen was it. People talk about shooting for the stars, but like, going for an actual popstar was never going to go well for Nick was it eh? Especially when that popstar was as flighty and full of warmth and grand adventures as Harry Styles. God, Nick still wonders how he ever even reeled Harry in as a friend. It always seemed improbable at best.

It’s almost frustrating, because Harry was his friend for so long, and they almost had something so many times, danced around it and flirted with it, even dipped their toes in the deep end, but Nick couldn’t pin him down, not in the end, not when it came down to _stay here with me_ and _love me_. Harry didn’t know how to stay and Nick didn’t know how to ask.

Their friendship dwindled in the way they assured each other it wouldn’t – assured each other between clumsy wine drunk kisses and hot searching hands pressing under shirts and quiet gasps – and waking up one day to realise he didn’t know the last time he had spoken to Harry was like a dousing of ice cold water over his head. Nick had been desperate to cling to it then, wanting to scramble to find his phone and text, call, anything. It was minutes later, disorientated in his pyjama shirt with Pig nosing at him curiously, that he realised he didn’t know what to say to Harry anyway. He left it, abandoned his phone to make tea and feed the dog and wake himself up. He lost the panic in the busy mess of his working day, and somehow he taught himself not to care that the tenuous connection they had left seemed to be gone.

Life did move on, continues to, and all without Harry, even if the idea once seemed a total impossibility. Thinking of Harry now, standing on Aimee’s doorstep, does him as much good as it has ever done – that is to say, none at all. In fact, it tends to make him morose and unlikeable, so he’s told.

He knocks, mustering as much enthusiasm as he can. He refuses to be mopey, it’s ridiculous if nothing else. He’s too old for it.

He greets Aimee as she opens the door, wide smile on her face that matches his own. The forced enthusiasm rapidly becomes real in the face of her bright good humour. Aimee is good for him, even if her little family is too perfectly lovely for him to stand sometimes.

"Hey love. Alright?" She kisses both his cheeks, laughing a little, launching into rambling about the dog and the baby and Ian in equal measure as she coaxes him through to the back garden. Nick finds he doesn’t mind as much as he thought he might, liking the scattered updates and tales of daily misfortune that make him laugh. He follows Aimee through the cooler interior of the house, abandoning his few belongings - keys and wallet – on the kitchen table as he passes through. Aimee pulls him into the bright green space of the garden with a hand tucked familiarly into the crook of his elbow.

What follows is the familiar flurry of greetings that make Nick feel full to bursting with smiles and affection, almost too tight hugs exchanged amongst the rabble and noise and laughter. Alexa, elegant as ever, presses a glass of Pimms into his hand and he’s mid sip as Douglas envelops him in a hug, handsome face unfairly unaffected by the pass of time as ever. He's half way through hugging Douglas tightly and mussing his newly shorn hair, admiring it in teasing tones, when he actually sees Harry. 

Despite his earlier dwelling on him, Nick had not expected to see Harry at all. It’s been so long, _so bloody long_ , that seeing him leaves Nick feeling off kilter and at odds with the whole event, blinking slowly with Douglas still wrapped around him. The world doesn’t stop, doesn’t even slow, but Nick isn’t noticing it anyway, eyes unerring in their focus now they’ve locked on. Harry always was magnetic in the best and worst ways.

Harry currently has Cara’s attention, explaining something to her with absentminded hand gestures and that peculiarly focused expression he always got when well into narrating a story of some kind. Nick is almost unaware of Douglas releasing him from the warm hug and his concerned voice seems distant. Nick flicks his gaze back to Douglas a moment, making an inelegant sound to indicate just how much he hadn’t listened.  
“Didn’t you know he was coming?” Douglas asks again. Nick shakes his head. Aimee bloody well should have told him. Though, maybe he’d hidden the ache and the scar Harry left on him too well, maybe even Aimee didn’t know. Maybe she thinks it would be good for him – somehow that seems more likely.  
“No,” he admits, swigging from his Pimms with a little less delicacy than before and exhaling heavily, “Didn’t have a clue, did I. God.”  Douglas pats his shoulder in an affectionate sort of way that suggests that Nick’s feelings are actually written all over his face. His eyes are back on Harry though, so he can’t see the accompanying pitying expression Douglas is likely sporting.

It's not that he's forgotten what Harry looks like, see, hardly can when he's in the public eye as he still is, but… it's been a long while since Nick’s seen him, really seen him, right there and not on a glossy magazine page or a computer screen. The last few years, the sidesteps around being a _them_ , then the quiet fall out and finally all of the not talking anymore, suddenly seem an insurmountably wide chasm to cross. 

Part of Nick wants to march straight over to him, to hug him, check he's as healthy and happy as he looks - because God does he look good – but that’s… that’s not what they are any more. Nick doesn’t know what they are.

Drinking Harry in is still as painful and lovely a process as ever it was however, and it feels all over again like the beginning, when they were learning to be friends and Nick didn’t know the taste of Harry’s kisses, when he could only look, when a touch was too familiar still.

He is still as tall and lean as he's ever been, never one to become built the way Liam did. But he is broad, broader still than he was in Nick’s memories – hauling Nick up right off his feet with laughter tumbling from his mouth, the warm fond sound muffling against Nick’s neck as they stumbled towards the sofa - shoulders a wide spread tapering down to his slim waist and sharp hips. His taste in shirts remains as impeccable as ever, a bright disconcerting salmon pink and floral concoction that anybody else would look appalling in. 

The changes Nick can catalogue are few but are softly telling of the years he's gained. Harry's hairline has receded a fraction more, but his mane is still thick and pushed back from his face. His eyes crinkle warmly as he laughs and but there are more lines there than before.

The wedding band on Harry's ring finger in almost lost amongst his many others, decorating the elegance of his hands as they fly about in his storytelling. Nick could not miss it though.

It’s strange really. He knows Harry had found someone. He does. But, still, seeing the inconspicuous piece of jewellery comfortably in place on Harry’s hand like that, like it had always been there, that’s harder to stomach than he ever thought it would be.

Nick met Harry’s now wife, once, forever ago at some bar in LA when he was visiting. It had been some thing Jeff had invited Harry to and Nick had tagged along, a collection of interesting and beautiful people talking about their interesting and beautiful lives. LA often seemed that way to Nick really, and he’d felt out of place there in a way Harry rarely let him feel. They hadn’t lasted long at the bar, he remembers, crying off to go back to Harry’s sprawling modern house and get disgustingly drunk in front of the over sized television in his lounge, but, Nick does remember being introduced to her, to Alyssa. It’s a half memory that only really came back to him when he saw a photo of her and Harry at their wedding that Niall posted on Instagram.

Somehow the reality of the smiling beautiful woman, her cheek pressed to Harry’s intimately in that photo, had not dawned on Nick, not really. She had everything Nick had been too afraid to ask for from Harry. He wanted to hate her for it a little, the bitterness a twinge in his chest that he resented, but he couldn’t. She had somehow pinned down Nick’s charming boy, made him quit his restless wandering, and fair play to her./p>

Harry’s storytelling comes to an end with a low little laugh that Cara in front of him echoes delightedly, and a smile curls the softness of Harry’s mouth. No longer so focused, Harry’s gaze shifts and roams as he drinks from the fruit filled glass in his ringed hand.

His eyes meet Nick’s, and Nick’s foundations crack a little.

Some things change, but the bright warmth in Harry’s eyes has not. His gaze is arresting as ever and it flickers with surprise, then a familiar grin splits Harry’s face, the expression carving out a dimple in his smooth tan cheek. Nick’s heart stutters and clenches in his chest.

Any illusions he is still maintaining about his so called ‘past’ feelings for Harry die as Harry bumbles over and pulls Nick into a half hug. It’s like the past five years never happened apparently. Harry is warm and solid, his hair smelling of the same bizarre cucumber and mint shampoo and the low drawl of his voice in Nick’s ear as horribly familiar as if it were yesterday Nick last heard it so close.

“Hiya Grimmy.” Nick’s head is swimming and all his traitorous bastard friends seem to have abandoned him. He hugs back, distracted by the wealth of responses he could give, and managing only a slightly lame,  
“Hey love, been a while.” A while, if you can call years a while, five is it now? Or six? Harry seems undeterred.  
“You look good, Nick, how have you been?” Drawing away from the hug, Nick pulls himself together.  
“Yeah, good, I’ve been good. You?” The conversation is a million miles from their old friendly chat and Nick kind of can’t stand how small talk-y it feels. Harry smiles brightly at him.  
“I’m great yeah, Lyss and me just bought a place back over here, in London. The moving in mess is still happening.” Harry shrugs a little and runs his fingers absently through his messy hair. Nick is surprised to hear that Harry is back for any real length of time, let alone has a place in London again. It had seemed like when he moved to LA, he would never come back, but maybe he’s grown out of it. It’s not like Nick really knows this Harry any more. That idea stings.  
“That’s proper exciting init? Being back?” he tries, keeping his tone light, teasing. Harry laughs and makes a slightly scrunched up face. The silliness and familiarity of it makes Nick’s chest ache unexpectedly.  
“Bit weird mostly, mum and Gem are happy though. James is starting to talk and I got a bit freaked out by him not sounding _English_ you know? That’s what made us stop kind of looking and actually buy a place. Mum complains that she never sees him too, so she’s over the moon we’ll be around.” 

The casual mention of ‘James’ in the conversation makes Nick falter. Harry clearly expects him to know who James is, and it’s only Nick’s surprise that makes him slow to connect the dots. A baby. Harry has a baby. God, when did his charming boy have a kid? How did he miss that? He suddenly feels awful.  
“Yeah, James, I… never said congratulations did I? Bit late to be proper now, but…” Nick shrugs, feeling awful, small and a million miles away from Harry despite the foot or so of space between them. “How old is he now then?  
“Uh,” Harry’s thinking face can’t even crack the plastered on smile Nick is maintaining, “Almost 13 months now, we had his first birthday just before we left LA.” Harry nods a little, hair falling forward into his face. He tucks it back behind his ear with deft fingers as his other hand digs in the pocket of snug jeans to find his phone. 

Nick is still reeling a little and trying to process this wealth of new information. Harry and Alyssa had kept that news bloody quiet, or, well, Nick hadn’t been listening. Had tried not to listen even. How had he missed this. He wondered absently who the godparents were, attention called back to Harry by a squawk of sound from Harry’s phone.

Harry turned the screen so Nick could see properly, though he still had to lean in, their shoulders bumping and brushing. The camera was a little unsteady and he could hear Harry’s voice gruffly singing ‘Happy Birthday’ close to the speaker, but the focus was on a chubby little boy who looked so obscenely like his dad already that Nick couldn’t have mistaken him for being anybody else’s.

The little boy has a hand on the edge of a chair and bounces up and down a little on sturdy bare feet, tan little legs and arms peeking from a slightly oversized American football shirt - Nick doesn’t know the team. His wispy wavy dark hair reminds Nick of Harry’s and his eyes are undoubtedly his dad’s too. The video wobbles a little as Harry laughs, the little boy reaching for the phone, making happy babbling sounds and getting a cross little tilt to his brows when Harry clearly doesn’t let him have it.

Nick chances a glance at the actual man beside him and Harry is grinning dopey and fond at his phone screen.  
“He’s proper cute Haz,” Nick tells him, his own smile softening, “looks just like you.” Harry stops the video.  
“You think? Lyssa says that, I can see her though.” Nick shakes his head and huffs a quiet little laugh.  
“I just see a little you,” he admits. He’s about to inquire about the little football jersey James is sporting, but he’s cut off as Harry’s phone starts to buzz. The screen lights up an image of Alyssa holding James, both wearing sun hats. Nick swallows back the lump in his throat and waves Harry off with a smile when he excuses himself, stepping away to answer the call.

Nick watches Harry talk on the phone, pacing idly back and forth, deliberately overbalancing and correcting himself, spinning on one Chelsea boot clad heel and then the other. He feels like he recognises Harry only in looks. This proud young married man with a kid is not the restless boy who could not stay anywhere long that Nick had fallen for. That was almost a lifetime ago.

He cannot say he isn’t grateful when Alexa swoops in to chatter with him about the new line he’s creating, happy to distract himself with discussions about the fit of the jumpers he’s planning, and fantasising about all the beautiful boys he would like to model them. Aimee ducks in to top up their glasses of Pimms and pulls Nick down to kiss his cheek. He wants to talk to her about the Harry thing, about how she didn’t warn him he’d be there and he has a few things to say about nobody telling him about James, but, he’ll save it. Let it not be said that Nick hasn’t got better at picking the right moment to have those sorts of discussions.

He turns with laughter stretching his mouth wide when somebody taps his shoulder. Harry stands just behind him, smiling apologetically.  
“Sorry, Lyss called,” he explains, and Nick shrugs.  
“It’s _fine_ , it’s fine,” he brushes Harry off lightly, “Expect she probably needs you around with James runnin’ her ragged.” Harry grins ruefully.  
“Exactly, she’s got a headache, needs me to head home and sort him out so she can have a lie down, but…” Harry hesitates a little and pushes his ringed fingers through his hair, “Look, now I’m home, we should do lunch, or something, yeah? Like, catch up and all that.” Nick nods amiably, even though the idea makes a nervous riot of his stomach.  
“’Course Haz,” he agrees, “That’d be nice. Text me, yeah? We’ll organise it, probably next week or summat. Not sure I even have your number anymore,” he laughs. Harry’s expression is a little strange, albeit not annoyed.  
“It hasn’t changed, Nick,” he assures him, “Same as it’s always been.” 

That information somehow feels like a dig and Nick feels a little acid in his response.  
“Good, good, neither’s mine yeah.” Harry doesn’t get to be funny about Nick not talking to him any more, not when he hasn’t tried either. It’s subtle enough, but the step up in tension makes Nick feel uncomfortably irritable. “Speak soon,” he adds, tone more dismissive than he intends.  
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll text.” Harry falters briefly but pats him on the shoulder in a pleasant manner and leans in to kiss Alexa on both cheeks, promising to go out for a drink with her soon and she smiles, extracting another promise for cute photos of James too before Harry leaves them. 

Nick drinks his Pimms as Alexa continues their previous discussion, eyes finding Aimee across the garden as she exchanges her goodbyes with Harry too.

Watching him go, Nick considers the mess of his feelings, the nervous, angry confusion, the flutter and clench in his chest. He resents that Harry can still drag him down to that level with a few careless white-toothed smiles and light touches. Before getting to Aimee’s, he’d been so utterly convinced he was long over the period of his life in which Harry unknowingly toyed with his heart. Apparently, he conceded a little miserably, that was not the case.

Nick finishes his second glass of Pimms and politely excuses himself from chatting to Alexa to find somebody with a cigarette. He feels he deserves one.

 

* * *

 

Aimee is not nearly as apologetic as Nick feels she should be.  
“You had to see him eventually Nicholas,” she informs him, levelling him a serious look over her glass of wine, “It’s bad for you to pretend like he doesn’t exist or something,” she continues sagely. Nick hates her a tiny bit for being so sure of herself when she’s talking such total crap.

 The barbecue wound down slowly and Nick has boozed and smoked his way through it with good grace before broaching the whole ‘Harry’ topic. By now though, the light is almost gone, the sky sinking towards indigo, a fading halo of peach and gold just visible above the rooftops. The heat of the afternoon is fading faster than the light and Nick is sharing both a large faux fur blanket and a bench with Daisy and Douglas. He sits between them, safely bracketed by their warmth, legs covered with the comforting weight of the blanket, cradling a glass of wine to his chest.

“Yeah, okay, I had to see him,” he relents, “but you could have _told_ me.” Aimee laughs shortly and gives him a long look. Beside him, Daisy laughs softer and pats his knee lightly.  
“She’s right babe, if you knew he was gonna be here, you wouldn’t have come, would you, really.” He likes Daisy only fractionally more than he likes Aimee right now, but she’s providing warmth, so he’ll let it slide for the moment. Nick rolls his eyes.  
“Besides the point really, isn’t it though, you’re supposed to _my_ friends.” Daisy’s hand on his knee squeezes affectionately. 

Nick exhales heavily. The other thing is the worse part about it really, but he feels so absurd complaining about it.  
“And James. None of you mentioned that yeah, bit of an awkward shocker to find that out mid convo, eh?” Nick doesn’t want to see their faces, afraid looking up will reveal his own feelings too much, the ache written all over him at this new found knowledge of Harry having a _baby_ , this tiny little person he created with someone he loves – someone who isn’t Nick. The patio light creates a dark rippling reflection in his wine and Nick studies it intently. He feels more than hears Daisy sigh next to him.  
“God, Nick, babe, how- I mean, _everybody_ knew about that love, how didn’t you know?” Aimee asks him, the gentlest she’s been about anything so far. Nick shrugs in response, feeling childish but not trusting his own foolish mouth not to run away from him. 

It’s like, Harry clearly loves this kid, and that’s amazing, it’s beautiful. Nick has seen his friends pair off and have kids. Babies are puking, crying, screeching, wonderful little monsters that grow into the most brilliant tiny humans. Nick knows severely tiny humans that he adores, and he resents that Harry has one and Nick hasn’t met him. Nick is everybody’s kind-of-uncle. He would have been that for James, if Harry had let him, if he’d known. He’d have bloody sucked it up, all his aching heart and his bloody _history_ , just to bounce the kid on his knee and spoil him. Not knowing feels awful. He missed a whole year of this baby Styles’ existence.

Maybe, maybe if he’s going to proper think about it, he’s feeling more shit that he missed seeing Harry with him, watching his handsome boy learn how to be a dad. He’s seen his friends do it, Sadie and Mairead, then later Aimee. God it’s the coolest thing to watch them learn to properly be a grown up and look after this little person that’s suddenly there, and with Harry, he bloody missed that. That idea hits him so hard he closes his eyes a moment.

 “Was just, not looking wasn’t I, been trying not to for years Aims.” Douglas brushes a kiss to Nick’s temple and the burst of affection in that gesture makes Nick’s chest clench. He kind of misses, for a heartbeat, when he and Douglas hooked up casually for the sake of a warm body at night and the closeness of someone to kiss. He snorts a short annoyed breath through his nose at the folly of the idea. He and Douglas have long since moved past being good friends and casual hook ups. They left that at the door years ago. “Anyway, besides the point now init,” he continues, feeling self pitying in a way he resents, “I know about it all now and he’s back round and wanting to just carry on being friends.”

Nick finally looks up. Aimee is looking fondly exasperated.  
“Then maybe try being friends with him again, Nick. You know you hate that you let him disappear, so don’t this time, meet his kid and his wife, keep him around, see how it goes. You both fucked up, doesn’t mean you can’t give it one more shot.” Aimee smiles at Nick.

How is it she knows him so well? It shouldn’t surprise him after so long, not really. She’s right, after all. Harry had been his friend once, one of his best friends really, and they’d been good at that. It was drunken kisses and shared beds that had fucked it all up so bad. Nick could live without those things from Harry, didn’t have a choice not to if he wanted to be his friend again. Harry is married now, a dad – the words still swim around Nick’s heads in an unfamiliar haze, not really connecting to Harry in a real way, not yet.

 Nick nods a little and lifts his wine unsteadily in toast to Aimee’s advice.  
“Fuck it,” he announces, feeling braver just for a moment, “I’ll try.” Aimee toasts him back and blows him a kiss, Ian grunts in a more laddy approval and smiles faintly. On one side of him, Daisy kisses his cheek, murmuring a reassuring;  
“You’ll be fine babe.” 

On Nick’s other side, Douglas laughs quietly at him, upending the rest of a bottle of red into Nick’s glass. Nick doesn’t take long in drinking it before hopefully holding out the empty glass for more from anyone who’ll fill it. He may have resolved to try with Harry, to be his friend, however, for the rest of the night, Nick has every intention of getting gloriously smashed on good red wine and pretending for a tiny bit longer that Harry Styles is not somebody he gives a fuck about, after all, the last five years of that have worked just fine.

 

 


	2. I’m being my best, I’m weak in my chest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote more! Got there eventually, hope you guys still enjoy this....??  
> Thank you all ever so much for the kudos and appreciation too!  
> Much love!

_I’ve got an endless itch in the pit of my chest_  
_I’m being my best, I’m weak in my chest_  
_I’ve got the spine of a snake when it comes to my head_  
_You’re into my head_  
_Are you ready_  
_Are you ready or not_  
_Keep it steady_  
_While your heart is hot_

 

 

Nick has almost forgotten about Harry’s assurance that he would text – or he’s pretending he has anyway – when his phone buzzes with the promised message. He eyes the little bright notification with Harry’s blazoned across it. 

Part of him, despite his bravado in the face of Aimee’s persuasive chit chat, is all too willing to take a hurried few steps back and ignore the message altogether. It would be easy, he reasons, just delete it and pretend he never got it. With that he would sidestep the horrible imminent awkwardness of coffee or lunch or whatever Harry might want to organise, and he would also sidestep the inevitable recurring horror of trying to be friends with somebody you were in love with – a misery he’d failed at once already.

There’s a larger part of Nick however, that is irrevocably linked to Harry.

Nick knows he gives away bits of himself all the time – it’s what makes someone as awkward and unimpressive as himself so remarkably well loved. He knows he has a lot of friends, a lot of wonderful friends, but what endears Nick to people, he’s well aware, is his willingness to share. He shares the trivial personal minutiae of his day-to-day existence with strangers on the radio waves, he gives his comfortable self-effacing humour to others as a crutch as soon as he meets them. Nick makes himself available, gives himself up willingly.

He did it for Harry, once upon a time, gave him his number, his time, an ear to listen. He let Harry borrow a piece of his life, a bite of Sunday afternoon walks with a dog and cups of tea and a house that he calls home. He knows Harry cared for that more than the bars, the parties, the musicians, the designers, though that grew on his handsome boy all too well soon enough. The things Nick gave to Harry make him hard to let go of, if nothing else does.

It’s that unforgiving press of _I miss you being close to me_ that makes Nick read the message and not delete it. Nick hates his own lack of spine when it comes to beautiful boys.  
_'Heeey, sorry I didn’t text sooner!! Lyss isn’t very well, been busy with James. You free tomorrow for lunch? Pick a time and place! – H x’_ Nick doesn’t reply right away, just frowns and busies himself with making a cup of tea.

Pig stirs from the floor when he stands, bright eyes regarding him inquisitively, her ears twitching up in interest.  
“Always think it’s about you eh? Proper diva,” Nick murmurs to her in a low conversational tone, reaching to the cupboard beside his mugs for a treat from her tin. Tossing it down to her, Nick smiles at the flurry of movement as she scrabbles from her bed to launch forward and snatch the snack up barely as it hits the floor. “Act as though I never feed you,” he protests mildly. Pig settles down with her forepaws elegantly crossed to chow down on the treat. 

Nick returns to his own endeavours with a smile touching his mouth that had been evading him. His dog loves him; so really, sod the rest of the world. The familiar, autopilot movements of making a brew soothes Nick’s mood a fraction more and he leans idly against his kitchen counter as the teabag steeps a little, watching Pig enjoy her chew.

When he finally has a cuppa in hand, the warmth seeping through the ceramic, he takes himself out to his sunny patch of patio to figure out replying to Harry. Does he actually go along with plans for tomorrow? He’s not busy, but does that make him sound too lame and available? Nick huffs at his own idiocy. Harry knows him for God’s sake, maybe not for a few years now, but he knows Nick likes to throw plans together last minute and likely has absolutely jack all to do tomorrow. He briefly considers texting Pixie to organise lunch with her instead, just so he _can_ say he’s busy. The pettiness of that is a little much even for him though, so he resigns himself to lunch with his old favourite popstar with only a day to panic about it. 

He prides himself on being both brief but polite in his response, letting Harry know of a quiet little Italian he’s been to a couple of times with Collette and Henry, somewhere they’re unlikely to be cared about by the patrons, and a informing him he’ll see him there at half past one. Harry does reply a few minutes later with a thumbs-up emoji. Nick doesn’t feel that warrants a response, so settles into enjoying his tea and sending strings of distressed emojis explaining the situation to his friends in various Whatsapp groups. Douglas is first to decode, sending him bag a string of apologetic and dubious expressions and some hearts and food to perk him up.

Nick sincerely appreciates the close friends he’s chosen in that they bother to decode his distress purely through the refined art form of the emoji. Aimee sends him an actual message however, a curt but well meant ‘man up!’, followed by a string of kiss-faces and hearts. He laughs despite himself, and the sound prompts Pig to trundle outside and join him. She hops up onto the little love seat beside him and makes plaintive noises until he strokes her head lightly, scritching behind her ears and swigging his tea.

“Do you think I’m ridiculous?” he asks her, looking fondly on her contented face as she pillows her head on his thigh. “Hmph. Know it’s my own fault, don’t I, no need to tell me yeah. If I didn’t get so fond of popstars I wouldn’t find myself in these situations.” Pig exhales in a huff and blinks up at him when he stops petting her. “Yeah, Piggy, I know girl, I’m definitely too old for this.”

 

* * *

 

Nick is horrifically early, or, well, at least on time. Either way, Harry isn’t there yet and Nick suffers the awkwardness of asking for a table for two alone and settling down. Some insufferable part of him wants to impress Harry, like that still matters, so Nick feels absurdly uncomfortable, on time in a nice shirt with his hair done properly. It’s not a date, it’s as far from a date as it can get, and yet Nick feels almost as nervous as he might were Harry a stranger. This Harry kind of is one. 

Nick has politely brushed off offers to order twice by the time Harry appears. Nick reckons he’s about fifteen minutes late, according to the half glance at the clock on the wall behind the restaurant bar.

The possible reason for his lateness is evident when Nick catches sight of him. Harry is wearing a shirt Nick is surprised he still owns, from back when Nick launched his first collection, looking a little well worn but still absurdly good on him. James is balanced on Harry’s hip, fist clenched around the arm of Harry’s no doubt expensive sunglasses. Harry, wisely probably with a baby around, has his hair scraped back messily and looks a little distracted. 

He strides over, a bag over his shoulder bumping against his hip, offering Nick a warm smile.  
“Heeeey, look who it is Jamesy, it’s uncle Grimmy, say hi to Nick, James?” Nick feels bad for not expecting Harry to bring James, especially since he knew Alyssa had been unwell. He catches up as quickly as he can, trying not to be both pleased and a little resentful at the casual moniker of ‘uncle Grimmy’, like he and Harry’s kid have met before.  
“Hiya loves,” he greets, standing up to half hug Harry politely. He finds himself distracted by James though, remembering Arlo at that age and finding himself helpless not to grin.

James is just as cute as Harry’s video seemed, happily munching on Harry’s glasses and babbling nonsense, interspersed Nick notes with some almost words, maybe. Harry had said he was starting to talk but decoding his chatter is beyond Nick. His hair is a little flat on one side from sleeping on it, sticking up cutely at a haphazard angle. Nick fusses gently to flatten it a bit.  
“Hiya little guy, what’s your dad done to your hair eh? Messier than his it is, you poor love.” Nick doesn’t protest when Harry mumbles about a highchair and presses James into Nick’s arms. Nick is pretty good with kids he reckons, and James seems amiable enough. Bouncing him lightly and chatting a commentary of Harry’s movements to him seems to keep him happy enough. Frankly, the chubby little boy is more concerned with ruining the sunglasses he’s still so focused on. 

Harry reappears, surprisingly competently unfolding a restaurant highchair and sorting out the straps and clips. Nick helps to direct James’ wayward feet into the right holes to sit him down in it and lets Harry clip him in. Once in the chair, James suddenly seems to realise his predicament, looking up at them, sunglasses half in his mouth and brows drawing together. The expression is comically similar to Harry’s frowning and Nick laughs. Harry, pre-empting disaster, fishes both a drink and a soft toy from his bag, offering both to James. The little boy predictably releases the glasses and re-occupies himself. 

Nick is struck in that moment how good Harry is at this, automatically and without fuss or thought. He remembers watching Harry with Lux and the offspring of a million of their friends besides, knows he’s always been good with kids, patient and gentle and encouraging, and Nick is filled with a warm sense of rightness that Harry is able to extend that loveliness to somebody small of his own now. Harry was always going to be a good dad; Nick just hadn’t expected it to happen for a while. 

Harry steals his glasses from the table of the highchair and absentmindedly wipes away the drool on he leg of his jeans in the careless way parents seem to, unfussy about their kids’ spit and snot and the like. Nick smiles.  
“I need to stop buying nice sunglasses,” Harry admits, tucking them into his bag, “He loves them, steals them right off my face.”  
“Clearly got good taste already eh?” Nick teases and Harry shrugs.  
“Don’t know about that, I reckon I’ll be passing on an excellent sense of humour really. He thinks random stuff is really funny, I’m sure it’s my influence.” 

Nick is torn. As a member of the wait staff comes over to take their orders, he struggles with the dual sense of familiarity and newness. This is Harry, still Harry, despite everything, including Nick’s horrific nervousness and worries, but this isn’t how it goes with them. It’s lunchtime and Harry orders juice, not wine, so Nick himself refrains, though it seems odd to. Also, for once, Nick notes with a bitterness that is totally absurd, he does not have Harry’s full attention. He used to, see, he knows that. Harry wouldn’t ignore people, he was too sweet, too polite, but he always gravitated to Nick, focused on Nick. Now, _obviously_ , his attention flickers constantly between the toddler nattering to himself and Nick, but sharing Harry’s attentions, however warranted his other focus is, feels weird to Nick.

The waiter abandons Nick to Harry again and Harry having the sense to continue their conversation saves Nick. Nick himself is lost for what on earth he’s supposed to talk about here.  
“I saw your last capsule collection,” Harry remarks, settling into his chair and smiling across at Nick, who simply manages a look of genuine surprise and makes a vaguely undignified ‘oh’ sound into a glass of water. Harry grins. “I have most of it to be honest, had to actually buy it.” Harry doesn’t continue that thread, neither of them needs to bring up Harry not having been there to badger Nick into handing it over.  
“Bet it looks good on you popstar, most of my stuff always looked better on you. Having younger friends should be a _crime_.” Harry laughs, short and white toothed, eyes crinkling warmly.  
“I mostly liked the clothes more because they were borrowed.”  
“Stolen, now Styles, _stolen_ , don’t beat about the bush.” Nick finds himself grinning despite the nervousness, despite everything. Harry squawks in protest.  
“I _never_ stole.” Nick arches a solitary brow.  
“Never gave them back either though, eh?” Harry’s grin shifts to sheepish.  
“I always meant to?” Nick calls bullshit with a startled little laugh in response. Harry continues, his tone light, but a world of hopefulness behind it that catches Nick off guard. “Just have to come round and raid my clothes to take them back won’t you, some time.” Nick recognises the tentative reaching for what it is and mans up the way Aimee demanded.  
“Yeah, yeah I will, have to text me your new address yeah?” Harry nods, the smile on his face the simply pleased one Nick always used to be able to conjure so easily.

 James ruins their foolish awkward grinning with a particularly loud squawk and a cross ‘dadadada’. Harry’s gaze slips from Nick instinctively and his smile softens, nose wrinkling as he pulls a face at his little boy.  
“Hiya, Jamesy, daddy’s listening love, what’s up?” James’ cross babble continues, his grumpiness shifting to the pleased chatter of a baby that has the attention he had been demanding. Harry takes his soft toy, some much loved and abused elephant whose trunk looks to have been well chewed, and manipulates it to gently bop James on the nose and startle a giggle from the confused little boy. “What’s the elephant doing? Is he kissing you?” Harry makes a dramatic kissing noise as he bops James again. James snatches the elephant back into his arms and enthusiastically mimics Harry’s kissing noise and the gesture as much as he can. The whole scene, Harry’s fondness and James’ sweet amusement at it all, it just makes Nick grin stupidly.

His boy has gotten so good at this. He continues to watch Harry playing with his little boy idly, entertaining him and speaking to him in low warm tones, no silly words, encouraging the almost nonsense he gets in response towards the words it might almost be. It’s so achingly lovely that Nick feels pleased he’s somehow managing to sneak into this person that Harry has clearly hidden from the public eye excruciatingly carefully. 

After the whole barbecue incident, Nick would be a liar to pretend he didn’t Google about Harry and James and Alyssa. He was able to garner pictures of the wedding, those he pointedly ignored, and a handful of polished bright flash shots at events, Harry suited and booted and Alyssa glimmering and glowing beside him. A few later ones posted on gossip sites discuss the possibility of a baby bump – Nick doesn’t see it in the pictures, not really – but then there are the articles, all with the same little clip of Harry in an interview, grinning and accepting congratulations on the new baby from James Corden. Nick figures Alyssa must have just not shown much and kept it awfully quiet.

The pictures of James just don’t exist, always covered and behind walls of people, they clearly kept off radar and out of the way. It doesn’t surprise Nick. Harry has always been generous with himself and his polite good nature, but he can be selfish when he cares about something enough. He knows James has been kept to family, friends. 

He gets to see this though, and it feels like a gesture, a sign Harry is willing to let him in again, willing to try all this if Nick is.

“What’s he like with animals?” Nick asks Harry idly, interrupting him helping James to balance his juice cup slightly as he drinks from it.  
“Oh, pretty good? Lyss’ parents have a cat, so we’re teaching him to be gentle and he doesn’t really seem to get scared?” Nick nods a little.  
“Should introduce him to Pig some time? She proper loves getting to muck about with kids, Arlo used to play with her for ages and stuff.” Harry grins and nods enthusiastically.  
“Yeah, yeah I’d like that, I’d like to him to meet her, she’s lovely, I’m sure James would like that too.” Harry glances at James and back to Nick and his eyes crinkle more with his smile. 

With that casual offer, Nick extends back the hand of friendship he feels Harry offered him again. It’s weird, and underhand, unspoken, but he feels like they both get it, like it’s a mutual understanding. Later, explaining it all to Aimee, Nick thinks perhaps it was only obvious to Harry and himself. 

 

* * *

 

After some pasta and casual chat about mutual friends, Harry had vanished home with James balanced casually on his hip, slipping into a dark car and waving goodbye to Nick distractedly. Nick headed home himself, updating his friendship circles on the situation. Now, he finds himself nursing a cuppa and trying to clarify why exactly this was a good step to Aimee.

“He wants me to _come over_ , Aims, wants me to hang out with him at his, proper like, it’s clothes, it was always our thing.” Aimee looks sceptical, arching one brow at him and making a soft dubious noise as she sips a cup of coffee.  
“Well, it’s a good start babe, but don’t get ahead of yourself.” Nick huffs.  
“It’s fine, love, honest, I think we’re going to be okay.” Aimee’s response is dubious again and Nick wants to throw a pillow at her.

 Aimee’s one of his best friends for a reason, she’s a babe, a supportive, funny, kind beautiful person, but God if she’s not judgemental sometimes.  
“Seriously,” he assures her. He’s feeling good about the lunch with Harry thing and resents her cloudy day response to his burgeoning hope regarding their future rekindling of friendship.

 Aimee sighs in a way that Nick recognises as fondly long suffering.  
“When are you seeing him again?” she asks. Nick had not made any concrete plans with Harry, but they returned to the idea of Harry bringing James to meet Pig some time, soon, so that’s as close as he can figure.  
“Don’t know do I? He’s probably going to pop round soon for tea, let James meet Pig girl. She proper loves babies, does Pig, it’ll be nice.”  
“For tea? To meet Pig? _Nick_.” Nick shrugs. “It can’t be like it used to be, you know that right?”  
“It’ll be fine Aimee.” Nick’s chest clenches in the way he hates. Aimee is quiet for a minute, working on her coffee. 

Perhaps Nick should know her better, know she’s not done with her line of thought yet, but he’s still shocked when she speaks up again, sure of herself.  
“You still love him. I thought you might not, but you do.” Nick knows at this juncture, he could protest, he could assure Aimee that he _is_ long over Harry, that adoring that stupid brilliant boy is a thing of Nick’s past, and he is content to be his friend and care for him, platonically. But it’s bullshit, like so many of Nick’s protests when it comes to things Aimee claims. 

Nick knows she is on the nail correct. Nick does still love him, loves him with the appalling faded ache that years apart has softened, that’s splitting open all over again. It’s like forgetting you have a scab on your knee, catching it, the sudden sting reminding you of how much it really is there. Fuck, Nick didn’t want to think about this. Aimee always makes him think about it. He’s paused too long. 

“I’m right, aren’t I,” she continues, softer, frowning at him. “You never stopped did you babe…” Her sigh is softer too, and her foot nudging him gently at the opposite end of the sofa. “I want you to have him back in your life babes, because he’s important to you, but don’t set your heart on him again, please, you can’t have him.” The words resonate in Nick’s head, again and again and again. _You can’t have him_. Why bloody not? It’s not fair. He wants to whine, to complain, to kick out about it. He purses his lips a little and shrugs.  
“What if I do have feelings Aims? He’s happy, I’m not going to mess with that, am I? I’m not a total twat, I can keep it under control. Always did.” Aimee levels a serious look at him over her coffee mug. Nick cannot stand the level at which Aimee looks into his bloody soul with her long serious stares. “I _can_ ,” he insists. 

And Nick is sure of himself right then, sure of himself the way Aimee always seems sure of things. Being Harry’s friend _is_ something he can do. It’s a big thing, and maybe he hadn’t been sure, but a couple of hours with him had reminded Nick of all the things he thought he’d forgotten, reminded him how easy friendship had always come to he and Harry, when they let it. Nick just had to let it be, let it be and not love Harry too much. 

Even as he thinks it, he wants to laugh. When has he ever been able to love Harry bloody Styles just a little bit?

Aimee stops harassing him about it all after that, maybe realising he’s not ready for that conversation, or even that she won’t like Nick’s answers, and it’s something Nick is eternally grateful for in that moment. Instead Aimee chooses to regale him of a recent and horrific incident involving Ian and a new stair-gate, which makes Nick wince and howl with laughter, particularly on the addition of the video evidence she provides. Sworn to secrecy and calming from his laughter, he catches Aimee’s eye again and they both dissolve into teary-eyed mirth once more. By the time she leaves, things to do and places to be, Nick’s sides ache from cackling and his cheeks hurt from smiling.

 

* * *

 

Harry starts to message Nick after ‘the lunch date’. It’s rarely much, but small asides from life, things that make Nick grin. It catches Nick off guard to start with, leaves him wondering whether maybe he stepped back in time by accident, but these messages are different as much as they’re the same. They used to be about the boys, interviewers, shows, places, now they’re pictures of James doing bizarre things or dressed in particularly snazzy outfits, little sad emojis about the weather and absurdities like that. 

Nick finds it gets easier to message him back the more he tries. The first few times feel stilted, unsure, not forced but not at all easy. Now, he almost pops back messages almost like he never stopped.

It’s a step, Nick recognises, in the whole… friends thing. They can’t rebuild if they can’t be comfortable with each other, and Nick had been a million miles from comfortable when they started, when he first saw Harry right in front of him, this lean smiling blast from a past he didn’t want to mix with. He doesn’t necessarily think that’s wrong even, still, maybe this is all a terrible bloody mistake, but god knows Nick can’t help himself, not when it comes to Harry, not ever.

Nick is at work when Harry finally gets round to asking. 

Checking his phone against all the rules, Nick cracks a smile at a picture of James demolishing a banana in Batman pajamas in a highchair, amused at least that having a kid means Harry is awake when he’s on air, even if not for the timezome hopping reasons he used to be. He pops back a few monkey emojis and a banana too and Harry’s response is mostly nonsense. Nick wonders briefly if James helps.  After a quick chatty link, he glances down at his phone again, seeing an actual worded message after the barrage of little yellow faces. ‘ _Sorry! James was helping!! Can we come see Pig when you’re home from work? We’re booooooored._ ’ Nick huffs a laugh and doesn’t give himself a chance to second guess before agreeing.

It leaves him in a bubble of good mood he’s not felt in a long while. Like everything else about being with Harry, he’s not wholly forgotten the feeling, but it’s dusty, almost like new again underneath that. Nick’s chest just swells with this giddy teenage little ‘ _later_ ’, which makes him want to grin. To be honest, Fifi’s eye rolling and weird looks tell him that he probably does have a stupid expression on his face. Harry always did bring out the worst in him.  
“What’s got you all dreamy eyed?” she teases as they don their jackets. Nick brushes it off idly.  
“Ah nothin’, just a nice day init little Fifi? Don’t need to be all suspicious.” Fifi is sceptical but waves him off home with her normal smile. Nick holds the secret of ‘ _Harry_ , _soon’_ in his chest the whole way home, and it makes him almost light headed with excitement. He wonders, distractedly, if that will die down. He suspects, realistically he reckons as he opens a message of ‘ _See you soon!_ ’ from Harry, that it probably won’t.


	3. heart on a tilt always sliding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologise that this took so long??

 

_It's emerging, a new version of you_  
_In the wild, your animal is loose_  
_It gets darker to abandon all you've had_  
_The raw night holds a different kind of man_  
  
_How good does it feel, sliding?_  
_Your heart on a tilt always sliding_  
_Your heart on a tilt always sliding_  
_How good does it feel?_

 

Having accepted Harry inviting himself round, Nick realises that his house is neither tidy nor baby proof. That knowledge sits on him a little uneasily. Why, he can’t say, because it’s not like people don’t bring their kids to his plenty and they’re fine, but some part of him feels he should be extra careful, for Harry.

He puts the dirty plates in the dishwasher, wipes down the sides and runs a hoover over his lounge. Beyond that, he doesn’t have time to continue tidying like he might want.

There had been a time when Nick would be concerned about his bedroom too, knowing Harry ending up in there at some point or another would be an almost inevitable situation. To begin with it was because neither of them liked to sleep alone, and at the end – _Harry’s low laugh intimately buried in the underside of Nick’s jaw in the dark, the rustle of the thick soft duvet as they shifted and pressed closer, warmer, the faint light from a gap in the curtains painting a white stripe across Harry’s face for a moment as they broke their kisses_ – it had been all the more inevitable, one way or another.

Nick’s doorbell rings and Pig barks in greeting.  
“Hush, Pig girl, hush now,” he admonishes gently, dismissing the memories forcibly and nudging his shoes to one side in the entry hall as he makes towards the door – wouldn’t do for a popstar and his baby to trip over them and break their necks or something. 

Opening his front door to an almost familiar sight makes Nick crack a smile. James is chomping happily on Harry’s sunglasses while his dad squints in the sunlight, unkempt hair in a scruffy loop and shirt hanging open down to his sternum.  
“Hiya,” Nick manages with a grin.  
“Alright there Grimmy? Say hi James, hi uncle Grimmy!” Harry’s prompting garners little from the little boy in his arms, just a grumbling around the arm of the glasses. Nick steps back to let them in.  
“Looked like you were proper having fun this morning, not like you to be up early.”  
“James is a big fan of early mornings, I’ve learnt to get on with it,” Harry laughs, toeing off his Chelsea boots beside Nick’s own abandoned shoes. 

The two of them move around each other with a practice Nick had thought was lost to them, the calculated shifts and movements, never in the way, just bumping, brushing, moving past. 

With tea made and James on the lounge floor, coffee table pushed to the side, they are able to make the appropriate introductions.  
“This is Nick’s dog James, she’s friendly, say hello to Nick’s dog…” Harry is sprawled on the carpet, helping James balance with one hand on the small of his back as the little boy cautiously touches Pig’s face, her inquisitive sniffing wet nose making the little boy shriek in delight when it brushes his palm. 

Nick loves Pig to pieces, endlessly grateful that in a dog he has the most amazing companion to share space with, but mostly glad that she’s such a easy-going softie and he can have her be a part of things like this. He trusts his silly, lovely dog to play nicely with Harry’s kid, to be gentle with him. He’s actually surer of Pig than himself really, like, he could drop James or something and that would actually be terrible. 

Nick’s fears about being friends with Harry dissipate more with every interaction, every minute spent together. His feelings remain the steadfast annoyance they have always been, but it’s not something insurmountable the way he imagined it to be before. Nick is sitting with Harry and fondly talking total crap about their mutual friends and, God, it’s so easy, somehow. 

Harry looks up at him now and then, between rambling and gesticulations and smiling that ridiculous wide, warm smile of his. Nick loves the way Harry smiles and he wonders, watching James pull at Pig’s ears, if this little boy will inherit that easiness, if his smile will light up rooms. Because Harry’s does, always has, for Nick at least. 

Chatting turns into lunch, James perched on Nick’s lap as Harry tries to feed him something concocted from the haphazard contents of Nick’s fridge. He and Harry manage more conventional sandwiches, eating between keeping a hold of a squirming and uninterested James.  
“Come on now love, it’s yummy, just a little bit eh?” Nick readjusts his grip on James and keeps calm as the little boy squirms and lashes out unhappily, whining and tossing his head, resulting in banana being flung across the kitchen. Harry responds with a long suffering sigh, nudging a stray curl back from his face with the back of his wrist, hands covered in bits of James’ lunch.  
“You are grumpy today pal,” Harry murmurs, fond despite his clear exasperation. Nick’s patience is a little thinner, but he admires Harry’s perseverance up until now, “Bit early, but you got up proper early, maybe it’s time for a sleep hmm?” Harry eats a bite of the banana himself, prompting James to dissolve into whiny tears and even more flailing hands and feet. “Definitely sleep time. Hang on yeah Nick? Let me clean him up, then I’ll just…” 

Harry gets up, cleaning himself off with a damp cloth from Nick’s sink, then comes back to wash James’ face off as well as his sticky hands. Nick tries to settle James, shushing softly and bouncing him lightly, but nothing is happening. Harry scoops him up unceremoniously and stoops to dig out a dummy and a soft toy from the bag on Nick’s kitchen floor. Both items hush James considerably and he snuffles and burrows in against Harry’s chest.   
“Sorry, he’s just… tired. I should get home probably, might get him to sleep in the car.” Nick stands, cleaning up after the massacre of lunch food absentmindedly whilst Harry jiggles slightly on the spot with James in his arms.  
“Don’t have to,” he shrugs, “Stay if you like, I’ll get some stuff and he can kip for a bit here.”  
“I- that’s nice of you, but better I get him home, really.” Nick feels a little cheated of his Harry time, but brushes it off as best he can.  
“Yeah, sure love, whatever you think’s best, eh?” 

Harry’s smile is slow and his demeanour quiet and James’ eyes are closing in little dips of his lashes, body curled small and soft against Harry’s chest. The image of it makes Nick ache in a peculiarly gentle, sad way that he doesn’t care to examine too closely.

Nick doesn’t want to push the issue, not with the kid already mostly asleep and the tiredness he can see underpinning Harry’s body language now his baby is settling and needing his attention less.

“Maybe you should have a nap too, yeah, Styles? Forty winks or summat?” Nick’s voice is low, wary not to disturb James. Harry’s answering smile and the slight nod reassures Nick that his boy might at least try.  
“Mmm, we’ll see, if I can get him down I will.” Nick knows Harry can sleep anywhere, any time, but suspects having James making him wary to – a baby totally dependent on you does that kind of thing. He remembers Aimee’s refusal to get a babysitter for months because she was too scared to let the baby out of her sight, she got there though, and so will Harry, Nick has every confidence. 

Nick gamely packs up Harry’s bag so he doesn’t have to jostle James, trailing into the hallway, the only sound the quiet shuffles of their sock clad feet, interspersed with quiet nasal huffing snuffling sounds from James. He seems to have dropped off to sleep mostly. 

Harry’s boots present an issue that they both giggle at quiet and helpless not to, like teenagers back late and trying not to wake their parents. Nick kneels down eventually, joints protesting loudly as he does so, helping Harry manoeuvre his feet into the scuffed suede boots, Harry grabbing blindly at Nick’s coat hooks to hold his balance, long legs wavering off balance. Nick stands up and finds himself too close, closer than he meant to be at all, face scant inches from Harry’s. He grins awkwardly, murmuring a soft,  
“Sorted.” Harry grins at him a little, a flash of teeth. Up close Nick can see the softness of his pink mouth and his brightness of his eyes, the little creases where his dimples sit and the scattering of faint stubble on his jaw, barely there. In the small space of the corridor, Nick doesn’t move away, instead hefts up Harry’s satchel baby bag overflowing with ‘stuff’ – Harry had explained its contents earlier with an airy wave of his hand – and helps to hitch it over Harry’s free side. He’s careful not to nudge James, settling the strap on Harry’s broad shoulder. 

“Should be alright.. I’ll, uh, I’ll see you soon yeah?”  
“Yeah, maybe on Saturday? If you’re going to that thing Daisy organised?” Nick nods a little, reaching out to turn the handle on the door. It clicks open with a soft snick, a little brush of air seeping through, a crack of light. He doesn’t open the door properly yet.  
“Yeah, I’ll be there,” he assures Harry, “See you then, yeah.” Harry smiles.  
“Okay, Saturday. Thanks for having us,” he continues, lips quirking into another soft private smile, just for Nick, “take care.” 

Harry leans in and kisses Nick’s cheek. It’s chaste, a dry brush of his lips to Nick’s skin that he didn’t expect and hardly feels. With that unexpected goodbye, Harry slips out of the open door with James clutched to him, making for the smart Range Rover parked on the street. Nick watches him wrangle James in with a practiced ease, closing the door as Harry himself climbs into the driver’s seat and the engine revs to life. 

Nick’s cheek is tingling, and his skin is flushed and he hates, god he _hates_ , that is takes this bloody little from Harry to send him reeling. What was the point of kissing Nick goodbye like that? What did it serve? They could have gone for a half hug, a shoulder squeeze, anything, but a kiss on the cheek…. The familiarity of it, became so often a tease, a prelude, back then, makes Nick feel caught out now, unsure and frustrated with himself. 

He messages Douglas a distressed little ‘Kiss on the cheek goodbye’ with a handful of panicked emojis. There’s no response and Nick feels abandoned. He simply can’t text Aimee about it, because she’s bloody insufferable about Harry and she’ll just get all knowing and disapproving and start telling him to man up or something. He messages Henry too though, hoping for sympathy. The response is largely fruit emojis and a thumbs up which is… not what Nick was looking for, particularly. Never mind, his friends are useless. 

 

* * *

 

The rest of Nick’s week flies by. He finds himself caught up in the rhythm of work and gym and friends and dog and hardly has the luxury of time to dwell on his little interlude with Harry. It comes back to him at the most inopportune of times, of course, unexpected and unasked for, surfacing amongst the other restless churning of his thoughts like a particularly persistent stain he can’t get rid off.

Thinking about the brush of Harry’s lips on his cheek, the colour of his eyes that close in the dim hallway, the hopeful lilt to his voice when he asked about Saturday. Oh Nick’s not a fan of that little memory when it flashes up. He brushes it aside each time with a firm hand lent to him by busy necessity. Lots to do, he reasons, lots to do, no time for that.

In some ways, a busy week is the only kind of week Nick likes. He knows people assume he loves to laze about and mooch around, and he does, _sometimes_. He totally needs his little trips somewhere sunny now and then and his afternoons with his telly and his dog, but he likes to be doing things. Too much free time just leaves him in a rut of quiet inertia and he can’t deal with it for long. Better, frankly, to be run off his feet, so the weekend comes and he’s really ready for it, needing it, dying to not do anything for a day or so.

And come the weekend does, the week drawing inexorably to its much happier close. It finds Nick, only half way to sozzled, wiggling his hips in his front room with Pixie. Aimee appears from his downstairs bathroom smacking her lips, colour reapplied and teeth gleaming as she smiles. Nick pulls her in with one outstretched hand, twirling her and grinning, singing along a little more exuberantly with the music. She laughs and plays along a little.

Saturday nights with his friends are the kind of things Nick lives for. 

As ever, the complex process of venturing from Nick’s lounge to the cab idling on the curb is a slow one that involves a lot of laughter and a lack of coordination.  In the back seat, Nick and Aimee sandwich Pixie and Nick buries his wheezing laughter in Pixie’s shoulder, nose scratching her dress and inhaling her perfume with every breath.

They tumble out of the vehicle as gracelessly as they entered it and file inside with little hassle, the slightly chill London street giving way to the carpeted low lit entrance of the club. Nick dreads to think how many drinks have been spilt on the possibly red carpet under foot.

Inside, Daisy greets them with her usual sunny disposition, her smile only widened by the cocktails she has clearly been drinking, a straw and fruit bedecked glass in one hand, the other waving about frantically. Nick loves his friends the most.

Harry appears a little later. By this point, Nick has matched his absurd friends drink for drink and is dirty dancing with Daisy in the most coordinated fashion he can manage. It’s really not his fault someone put on ‘Dirrty’, Christina was always going to be great to get inappropriate to.

He noticed Harry about the same moment Harry notices him and his boy’s face contorts and cracks in a laugh. Nick can’t hear it, but he knows exactly how it sounds, goofy and a shade too loud. He grins back, disentangling himself from Daisy and linking his hand to hers to stagger over and greet Harry. He stands, grinning foolishly, to one side whilst Harry and Daisy embrace, their hair eclipsing their smiling faces, all dark waves and curls meshing together under the glare and constant flicker of the club lights.

Harry turns his too wide smile on Nick next, and it roots Nick to the spot, leaving him swaying unsteadily into the hug Harry wraps him in. Finding his own face buried in Harry’s hair, he doesn’t begrudge Daisy the length of her hug. The tangled curls smell clean and are a soft tickle against his face, but more than that, Harry is a warm solid line against him, soft lips brushing Nick’s ear as he speaks.  
“Hey Grimmy, alright?” Harry’s low tone cuts straight through the noise surrounding him. Nick almost shudders, almost.  
“Hey Haz,” he breathes in response. Nick doesn’t want to let go. Nick _may_ have had a drink too many.

Harry is the one who gently eases Nick back, steadying hands curled around his biceps. A small smile tugs at the corner of Harry’s mouth and he huffs a laugh.  
“You okay yeah?” he teases a little, “think you need to come sit down a minute.” Harry, without a beat of hesitation, slides his arm around Nick’s waist, steadying and guiding Nick towards the bar alongside him. Nick goes where he’s lead, admiring privately the strength in Harry’s arm, the slight flex of his bicep he can feel, and the firm grip of his fingers where they splay over Nick’s side and stomach. He resists the urge to suck it in, in case Harry thinks he’s been skipping gym sessions.  
“I’m good,” he insists, “proper alright.” Harry laughs again, low and close, leaning into the bar a little to order drinks. He keeps his arm around Nick and Nick closes his eyes a minute, head swimming gloriously. As Harry shifts, his hand slips down the expanse of Nick’s side, resting lower on his hip. Nick turns his face and rests his forehead against Harry’s warm shoulder. The silken shirt shushes smoothly under his shifting.  
“Nicholas?” Harry’s voice interrupts his daze, teasing tone back. The hand on his hip squeezes tightly in a demand for attention, making Nick straighten and fight the urge to think inappropriate thoughts about Harry.  
“What’s up?” he manages, coherent albeit blinking a little slowly.  
“You want a drink?” Harry offers. Nick nods.

With only a little complication on Nick’s behalf, they manage to acquire a round of drinks and Harry keeps a hold of Nick to steer them both to a booth littered with bags, their owners dancing somewhere.

Nick realises then, only then somehow, that he’s alone with Harry, like, _actually_ alone, not even James there as a barrier between them, and somehow this leaves him leaning on Harry and Harry’s bloody hand _still_ on his hip. He takes it in a second. Harry’s thumb rubs slow, maddening, familiar circles over the soft cotton of Nick’s shirt. Nick swallows hard. Terrible, terrible idea.

Sitting up is possibly something Nick does a little more abruptly than he means to and that’s only a problem in that it makes him a little dizzy. The feeling fades from one moment to the next, but the disconcerting newly noticed knowledge that he is pretty much _alone_ with Harry does not.

Nick had thought he was doing well, he really, truly had. He thought this horrid stomach churning; lightheaded idiocy around Harry was at a manageable level. They had hung out, more than once, and they’d had _fun_ , super innocent, just-friends kind of fun. This doesn’t feel like that, like the new safe friendship Nick has been building. This feels just as dangerous as it used to.

“Why you here so late then?” Nick asks, desperate to focus, to think beyond the slow circles Harry’s thumb is tracing.  
“I had to get James down to sleep properly, he was fussy, wouldn’t settle y’know.” Nick doesn’t know, necessarily, but he can imagine. He needs the conversation to remain in safe bounds even if nothing else does, he can cling to that.  
“What about Alyssa? Couldn’t she help with that?” Harry shakes his head, his unkempt mane of hair bobbing and falling over his face.  
“I’m much better at getting him to settle, and she was tired, wasn’t a big deal.”  
“Oh, suppose that makes sense. Super pro are you now, at the whole getting kids to go to sleep business?” Harry laughs softly, voice a glorious, low, low hum too close to Nick.  
“Mmm, I’m not bad. Still learning.”

Nick is grateful for their friends tumbling into the booth, exclaiming delighted greetings towards Harry who waves at them, charmingly awkward and grinning. They both shuffle inwards to make room along the plush leather seats of the booth. Against the wall, tucked in the deepest curve of the table, the darkest one, Nick finds himself pressed closer to Harry than he was before. As they move to get comfortable, surrounded on both sides, Harry’s warm broad palm readjusts, fingers brushing underneath Nick’s shirt. Nick’s breath hitches softly in response and he desperately hopes nobody notices the way he tenses, fight or flight – fuck or flight – engaged at the first casual brush of Harry’s fingers.

Harry is fucking with Nick’s head. He glances sideways as he sips from his cool, sweating glass. Harry’s profile is limned in colour from the eclectic lights of the club; the sharp cut of his nose brushed with glowing blue; the soft swell of his lips swept over with yellow gold; the high curve of his cheekbone highlighted with a dash of pink. In the dark, between the thick sweeps of his dark lashes, his bright eyes reflect a speck of light. Nick hates the way he struggles to tear away his gaze. Harry and his beautiful face have been fucking with Nick since day one, the effect it still has on him is utterly unfair.

Harry engages enthusiastically in a catch up conversation with Douglas, both their handsome faces animated and focused. Nick allows himself to turn away. Aimee’s eyes find his, her brows arching in an expression that he equates to mildly judging concern. He can just about make out the ‘you okay babe?’ she mouths at him. He doesn’t know how to respond, just shrugs. The answer is not enough and her brows draw down to knit in concern.

“Nicholas I need you,” she demands abruptly, reaching for him. It disrupts the others between them, but with a few laughs, they allow Nick to wiggle his way out past them. Harry turns to watch him go, hand dropping to rest in the warm spot Nick has just vacated.  
“Back in a minute loves,” Nick assures them all, flapping his hand vaguely and grinning, catching the kiss a beaming Alexa blows to him.

Aimee takes him outside, the air a little cooler and freer, though hazy with smoke.  
“Spill darling, what’s happening in there?” she demands, lighting a cigarette carefully so as not to smudge her lipstick. Nick sighs and leans against the cool brick of the wall. The smoking area isn’t crowded, but hardly ranks as being sparsely populated either, an open air tucked away space on a terrace above the street level. Aimee draws closer at his reluctance to speak up.  
“I can’t be his friend Aims, it’s terrible like, bloody awful.”  
“He’s barely been here five minutes!” Aimee exclaims, lifting the cigarette to her lips to take a slow drag.  
“Yeah, and it’s proper bad. I thought we were okay, like?” Nick runs a hand through his hair, readjusting his quiff. “We did lunch, and he came over and it was nice, but I’ve realised it’s _James_. Him having his kid around makes it okay, on his own it’s the actual worst.” Aimee exhales slowly and taps the ash into a glass ashtray on a table.  
“Doesn’t look like you’re resisting much,” she comments, arching a single eyebrow. Nick makes a scoffing sound.  
“Leave off, what am I supposed to do? Push him off me? He’s being friendly-“  
“He’s being more than friendly and you _both_ know better,” Aimee interrupts, wagging both finger and cigarette in Nick’s direction.  
“I still proper want him, Aims, it’s shit.”  
“I know babe. But, he’s married, for a start.” Nick groans tiredly and curls his lip in pouting distaste.  
“Fucking _awful_ ,” he reiterates.

They both linger quietly for a while as Aimee puffs quietly through the cigarette until it’s a stump and a burning cherry. She grinds it out in the ashtray and looks at Nick seriously.  
“You’re both grown-ups, sweetheart, so you’re gonna do what you want, but think about it, yeah? That’s not a mess you want to get into.” Nick nods in agreement. Aimee isn’t wrong, rarely is she ever. Harry’s casual intimacy needs to be nipped in the bud, halted before it ramps up or affects Nick more.

She fishes out her packet of cigarettes again and offers Nick one. He almost says no, he’s proper good these days, but some part of him long for a little nicotine to smooth off the night’s sharp edges and chill him the fuck out. He accepts both the cigarette and the light and tips his head back against the wall as he exhales.  
“I don’t want this,” he repeats quietly, around a lungful of smoke. “I don’t want him.” Aimee laughs, a little fond.  
“Exactly babe.” 

They probably linger outside longer than they should, because people come in search of them, spilling into the little area with exuberant voices a disjointed cacophony of pleas for them to come and dance, music seeping out of the open door. In the mess of laughing faces, Nick sees Harry is with them.

As the group hustle inside, Aimee somewhere in the middle, Harry brushes off the dragging hands and lingers, standing outside with Nick instead. 

Nick notes, taking a long pull from the cigarette, that they’re more or less alone. Harry’s eyes flick to the cigarette and his expression briefly flickers with distaste.  
“Can go back in,” Nick assures him, “I’ll be there in a minute.” Harry seems to ignore him, shifting his weight from foot to foot, his Chelsea boot clad toes turned a little inward as they always seem to be. 

Even with the booze in his system and the cigarette in his hand, Nick feels jittery left alone with Harry this way. There’s nobody between them, no barrier. It makes it so much harder when so much of Nick still yearns to see if Harry tastes the same as he used to, and it’s not allowed any more, that’s not how they work and God knows Nick can hardly stand that when they’re surrounded by friends, when they have a baby sized chunk of proof of Harry’s love for somebody else right there. To be alone together is torturous. Nick is not a fan of causing himself pain willingly, and he vaguely prepares to put out the cigarette and head inside.

Harry is closer than he was a moment ago though, head tilted, bright eyes intent on Nick.  
“I’ve always hated when you smoke,” he informs Nick, like it matters. (It always matters, when it’s Harry, always has. The urge to put out the cigarette grows stronger. Nick keeps it resolutely between his fingers.) Nick makes a non-committal sound in response. “Makes you taste weird,” Harry continues idly.

To hear him speak so casually, like their history is something easy to talk about, like it’s nothing, it’s the worse kind of jab.  
“Well, not particularly important that now, is it?” Nick mumbles, shrugging a little and forcing a small smile.  
“No?” Harry steps in and leans against the wall beside Nick. As tall and broad as Harry is these days, Nick almost feels small beside him. They both stare forward. “Suppose not,” Harry admits quietly.

The silence between them is anything but easy; it’s fraught with the tension between Nick’s shoulders and at the corners of his mouth, and in the wrinkled lines across Harry’s forehead.  
“I really…”Harry begins, voice slow, low, careful, eyes still forward, “want to kiss you.” If Nick did not know Harry as well as he does, even if it is only the lingering remains of a private disaster that allows him that inside knowledge, then he would not have heard the little bit of fear in Harry’s voice. Nick loses all his breath in a short sharp exhale and closes his eyes for a second to quell the sudden spinning recklessness of his thoughts. _Harry wants to kiss him_. _Christ._  
“Not a good idea, that.” Nick’s eventual response is a little cracked with nerves, a forced lightness to it that only makes it sound flimsy.  
“Why?” Nick almost doesn’t hear Harry, the soft breathiness of the response half lost somehow. It makes Nick’s chest clench and he opens his eyes, turning to look at Harry.

He finds that Harry was looking at him first, that they are back to that horribly intimate closeness again, like in Nick’s front hall a scant few days before. But now, now James is not asleep against Harry’s chest, the ever-present reminder of _her_ , of this life Harry chose without him. Now, now it’s just them and bloody fuck if Nick doesn’t want it. Harry’s lips are a little wet, the shine of the orangey heat lamps on the terrace making the long soft edges him glow.  
“Haz,” is all he can say, quiet, just between them. It’s a fond thing, really, a casual shortening of his name that feels close, feels like friends, like it hasn’t been so many years since they’ve been this bloody close. Harry makes a quiet sound of assent in his throat, leaning in to kiss Nick softly on the mouth. 

Their lips meet lightly, a brush, hardly there. Nick’s stomach swoops in panicked, terrified excitement, longing maybe. It feels so inevitable, so bloody inevitable, so when Harry leans in that little bit more, parted lips slotting familiarly against Nick’s, it’s too easy for Nick to drop the remains of his lit cigarette and lift a hand to cup Harry’s jaw, thumb resting lightly under the jut of his cheekbone.

The kiss, Nick thinks, kind of lasts forever and no time at all, all in the same breath. The slick, warm press of their lips, brushing and catching and drawing apart, just leaves Nick with a feeling of déjà vu. He’s been here before, and yet not.

As Harry lifts his hand, presumably to cover Nick’s where it still rests warmly against Harry’s skin, Nick catches the glimmer and shine of Harry’s wedding band. Alongside the rapid stutter of Nick’s traitorous, foolish heart, and the pleasurable, anxious twist in his stomach, rises a swelling nausea and self-hatred. He catches Harry’s hand and draws it away from them both, dropping it like it burns.  
“Harry,” he breathes, frustration colouring his tone, hurt and anger warring in the mess of words he wants to speak. “We _can’t_. I’m not that kind of- I don’t want to.” Harry’s expression shutters off and Nick steps back.  
“ _I miss you_ ,” Harry insists, something desperate in his tone. 

It takes everything Nick has to walk away right then. He misses Harry too, he misses him with the aching, dragging feeling of a gap in your life that nothing else can fill, a puzzle slot that cannot be replaced with any shoddy replica. The Harry shaped hole in his life can only be skimmed over for so long before it rears its ugly head, because his boy made a mark like no other. And now Harry misses him too, wants him even, maybe, and it’s just not bloody fair, is it. Nick doesn’t want to be the guy breaking up a family, won’t be that guy. 

He finds his coat and fumbles out a message to Aimee, telling her he’s had to go, can’t stay. Harry comes after him, elbowing through the club in search of him. Nick doesn’t allow himself to look back at him, to hesitate, to wait.

If he waits, see, and he knows it, he’ll let Harry talk him around, they’ll let whatever the hell this is unfold a little more and god they can’t, _they can’t_. Nick knows that with a sickening certainty. Harry has a kid with another person, Nick reminds himself firmly as he ducks into a cab outside, rattling off his home address.

The whole drive back, he brushes his fingers to his lips, like he can still feel the press of Harry’s mouth, the sure, firm warmth of it against his. It’s worse to have had it again, just for a second, than it was suffering through the indignity of trying so hard to be Harry’s friend. Harry clearly is struggling with the definition of friend.

Nick allows his head to knock lightly against the cool window of the cab, the condensation chill and dampening his skin. He closes his eyes and, with a beat of hesitation, wipes roughly at his mouth with the sleeve of his coat, determined to cast off all trace of their shared stupidity from his skin.

 


	4. never going back again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay more?  
> Thanks for the sweet messages on tumblr those who were sticking their heads in to say hi! It was amazing to hear from people that they're actually enjoying this fic, seriously lovely! Thanks also to all the babes who left kudos, or commented, or even people who read and did neither, you're great!
> 
> This chapter ended up a bit longer than intended - whoops? - but hopefully you like it!
> 
> Please do come yell at me on tumblr if you like gryles. I actually did some fanart of the kiss from last chapter on my blog if you're into that kind of thing?? -> [HERE](http://popstar-vs-radio1.tumblr.com/post/132443439896)
> 
> Much love anyways, x

 

_Your first step feels like caving in_  
_You're never going back again_  
_Call out to your old friends_  
_You're never going back again_

 

 

Nick wakes with a dry mouth on Sunday morning. The night before comes back to him with a sharp clarity and a swooping sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. He feels a little nauseous, and it’s not the drink.

Lying in the dark of his bedroom, Nick stares at the ceiling and exhales heavily. Fuck. Harry had- yeah. He’d done that.

The sound of his phone buzzing with an incoming message on the bedside table interrupts his staring stupor and he reaches for it blindly, sleep clumsy fingers curling around it. The screen is too bright in front of his eyes. The majority of his missed calls seem to be Aimee, unsurprisingly, so are the messages. There are a few from the rest of his friends, complaints that he left without saying goodbye and gentler enquiries if he’s doing okay, lots of emojis. Nick almost smiles. There’s a text from Harry too, innocuously waiting for Nick to open it, to read.

He opens it, anxiety clenching his chest tight. ‘ _I’m sorry Grimmy. Let me make it up to you. Mine for lunch later? I’ll be good. James and me would like to see you. Come by about 1. Please. – H x_ ’. Nick chucks the phone down on the bed beside him in a fit of frustration and a little anger.

Lunch? Harry had bloody kissed him last night, told Nick he missed him and gone and kissed him, and now he’s asking Nick to come for lunch? Christ. It’s so overwhelmingly bloody ridiculous that Nick wants to cry, he really does. He fumbles for the phone again, the little lump lost in the mess of his duvet. Fishing it out, he taps out three successive replies telling Harry to fuck off and deletes them every time.

After a lot of indecision, he calls Aimee instead.   
“Babe, babe it’s like-“ the line goes quiet, muffled shifting and a thud from the end of the line. Aimee groans. “It’s not even 10.”  
“I know, sorry.” Nick can’t bring himself to care really, but he apologises anyway, knows Aimee will kick his ass later if he doesn’t.  
“No you’re not.” He hears a yawn, some quiet shuffling again and the thud of a door. “Right, not gonna wake up Ian now,” she explains, “spill, why am I getting a call so early? Why did you leave last night? Harry refused to tell me.”  
“He kissed me, out in the smoking bit, when you all went back in.”  
“Shit. He- _Nick_.”  
“I know.” The line goes quiet for a moment or so.  
“I didn’t think he’d go that far.” Nick laughs bitterly.  
“Neither did I, yeah? He just, kisses me, then tells me he misses me, like that makes it okay.”  
“Well, did you kiss back?” Nick snorts.  
“Not particularly. Like, not really. I left. After that.” Aimee sighs.  
“He’s an _asshole_.”  
“Asshole sent a text saying sorry. Invited me for lunch with him and his kid, wants to make it up to me, he says.” Aimee’s response is instantaneous and firm,  
“No. Nicholas, babe, that is the worst idea.” Nick shifts a little and lifts his thumb to his mouth to gnaw agitatedly at his nail. “Sweetie, you can’t just… you used to drop everything for him, Nick,” her voice softens and Nick’s chest is tight with how tired and gentle she sounds, how worried. “I know like, I know he never asked you to, but you did, you loved him and you were willing to put your life on stand still, and you can’t go back to that babe. He doesn’t mean to be that way, I don’t think, but he’s all take, no give.” Nick doesn’t know how to respond to that. 

The problem is really, Aimee’s words sting, they’re too close, too true. Harry has always been the restless, flighty type – until Alyssa, until now, maybe – and Nick had let him be that way, let Harry carelessly run away with his heart and dropped everything when he turned up out of the blue, smiling and smelling of aeroplanes, the sun of hundreds of thousands of miles away on his skin. Nick had let that happen, hadn’t tried to pull him back and hadn’t asked anything of him. 

But that was how it had to be, for God’s sake, Nick never wanted to hold Harry back from doing all the wonderful things he knew he was capable of doing, all he could achieve, all he wanted to see, and do and be. Like, who would Nick have been to try to hold someone he loved back when Harry had the world at his bloody feet? Nick couldn’t do it, didn’t do it. Maybe that made their relationship all give from Nick, all take from Harry, at least to outside eyes. 

It wasn’t, not necessarily, not really. Okay, Aimee was largely right, but Nick took something from what they had, he took a little of Harry, a little of him nobody else got to have. He took Harry fast asleep, face slack and hair a tangled mess, cheek creased from the pillow, the sunshine spilling across his naked back; took Harry in trackies and a knitted jumper, cuddled up to his side and mumbling snarky comments about contestants on Masterchef; took Harry at his wit’s end with tiredness and frustration, no energy left for the smiles and politeness and the charm he’s so well known for; took Harry with his mouth red from kissing, eyes lazily half closed and crinkling in a smile as he sunk to his knees in front of Nick. Fuck, Nick took that Harry, he took all he could, whenever he could. He made that trade and accepted it as fair, however unbalanced it might have seemed.

And now, he’s… stuck. All the sensibilities he’s grown up with tell him that Harry is off limits. He’s married and a father and should be so inaccessible to Nick it’s out of the question. That Harry has offered himself up like this shouldn’t matter, because Nick has to say no, did say no, or, he reckons he implied it with running away like he did. But Harry is trying to coax Nick back to him still, and Nick still so very earnestly does not want to lose the friendship they had, that he thinks they’ve proven they still have, at least a little. He doesn’t want to lose that, but he’s kind of terrified what will happen if they spend time together again. 

Loving Harry is a constant, Nick is used to it hurting in the background, used to it being an aside to the rest of his everyday life. He wonders though, if maybe Harry feels… _something_ , and that something isn’t a thing he’s examined much, maybe it’s surfaced seeing Nick again the way things have for Nick himself. Maybe Harry just doesn’t know how to live with it the way Nick does. Harry always was impulsive.

On the line, Aimee makes an inquiring noise.  
“You with me still Nick babe? Did you hear what I said?”  
“I heard.” Nick isn’t sure he wants to ignore Harry’s apology, he thinks, stupid as it might be, he wants to give Harry another chance, wants to believe this can still work – because it can, if they’re both on the same page.  
“I don’t like the way you said that.” Nick huffs a little.  
“I’m gonna pop round and see him Aims, I- I don’t know that deserves it, but, like, I want to give him one more chance you know?” Aimee sighs.  
“I think it’s a shit idea, but you know that. Why call if you’re going to completely ignore my advice?” She sounds tired and frustrated and Nick does have the good grace to feel a little bad.  
“Sorry, you did help though… thanks Aims.” She sighs again, quieter.  
“That’s okay love, just, be good yeah, let me know how things go…” Nick smiles.  
“Course I will, go back to bed babes. Speak soon.” 

They both hang up their calls with half asleep goodbyes and Nick spends a long moment lying there with his phone on his chest before he texts Harry back telling him he’ll come. 

He’s not sure if it’s a terrible mistake or not, but he’s done it now and maybe it’s another apparently foolish attempt to continue salvaging their friendship, but it’s done. At least, he figures, if Harry is being a prick, he can cuddle his baby instead, because James is pretty lovely and has never been a total twat to Nick – he chooses not to count the banana James smeared on his new shirt earlier that week, because babies do that kind of thing.

 

* * *

 

The address Harry supplies him with leads to a smart semi-detached property on an open tree lined road in the outer city that Nick could not dream of affording. The place is quiet, cars a distant murmur of sound, nobody about. Nick supposes Sunday afternoons are the kind of time designed to be like this, soft, quiet, spilled over with sunshine.

He presses the little buzzer at the front gate, hovering awkwardly. There’s a slightly distorted sound from the speaker on the intercom.  
“Hey, come in.” Harry’s voice on the speaker is a little tinny, and the smart gates start to fold inwards, a faint whirr and click from the mechanisms and a quiet squeak from the hinges – the noise grates on Nick’s ears. 

He steps onto the tidy paved driveway, a patch of grass obscured by hedges and high fences hiding a small blockish children’s slide. Nick half smiles imagining James playing on it with Harry. The front of the house is red brick, glowing in the sunshine, immaculate white-framed windows and a polished brass knocker on the front door. Before he can knock, the front door opens, Harry framed in the shadowy interior.

Music drifts distantly from the further back in the house. Harry shifts from one bare foot to the other, smiling in an awkward way Nick attributes to his stupid behaviour the night before.  
“You’ve got a proper squeaky gate out there, popstar.” Harry steps back to allow him in, shutting the door with a soft click behind Nick and opening his mouth to speak, lips parting. He’s interrupted.  
“Is that Nick, babe?” Nick’s gaze snaps from Harry to the figure that’s appeared at the other end of the entrance hall. 

Nick recognises her, from photos more than anything, though he knows they’ve met once. He lifts a hand in greeting to the beautiful woman smiling at him. She’s barefoot, like Harry, a loose oversized shirt on with her jeans. Nick’s good sense and manners kick in, despite his surprise, and he meets her halfway with a kiss to each cheek and a bright smile.  
“I know we’ve met before once,” she says, “but I hardly remember, sorry.” She laughs and so does Nick.  
“Ah it’s alright, not so memorable me.” Nick shrugs. “Weren’t you blonde last time?” Alyssa laughs again, white teeth and a little wrinkle of her nose.  
“Oh _gosh_ , I must have been? I’ve gone back to natural now, much easier, and Haz likes it better, don’t you babe?” She idly examines a chunk of her hair, the rich dark auburn colour of it catching the light. Nick wonders absently why she ever dyed it really, the natural colour of it is beautiful. The way she calls Harry ‘Haz’ makes Nick’s chest clench though. 

She turns and pads back towards what looks to be the kitchen, excusing herself;  
“Sorry boys, I gotta stir this soup or it’s gonna stick!” One glance at Harry answers Nick’s question. Harry was not expecting her to be here for this at all. Harry looks tired and a little frustrated, forehead wrinkling.  
“You’re married to a beautiful girl Haz,” he murmurs, slipping off his coat and hanging it with some others on a old fashioned stand. He removes his shoes too, as that seems the norm here. Harry flinches a little.  
“Nick-” he begins, tense and pleading.  
“Soup for lunch is it?” Nick interrupts. He’s regretting coming. He turns to head after Alyssa into the kitchen, but Harry grabs him arm to pause him.  
“She was supposed to go out Nick, someone cancelled on her.” Harry’s grip on his arm loosens and he looks tired. 

Nick doesn’t have the patience for this right now, for Harry looking at him like that. 

Ambling into the kitchen, Nick is met with the smell of cooking food. This is where the music was emanating from, unseen speakers rolling out easy riffs of guitar and smooth vocals. Alyssa stands comfortably at a smart electric countertop hob, stirring something in a pan. Across the bright open plan space, James is chattering to himself on a soft rug. The open French doors have a baby gate installed in them, but remain open to let in a cooling breeze.  
“Sorry for interrupting your Sunday,” Nick says, looking around. It’s easy to see that they’re still settling into the place, the newness of it a little too new, pictures absent from the walls.  
“Oh don’t be silly, Harry said he invited you round to keep him company while I was out, no point in cancelling, I’m just interrupting lads time a bit.” Alyssa flashes a small smile at him, tucking her hair behind her ear a little. Nick smiles back. 

Nick feels like the worst kind of fake, guilt simmering in his chest like acid, eating away at him. _I kissed your husband last night_ , he thinks to himself, even as he compliments the smell of the food Alyssa is cooking and pads over to hunker down by James. Nick feels a little sick.   
“Hey pal,” he greets, James’ attention diverting from the wooden shape block sorter he’s investigating. It’s easier to sit there and talk idly to their kid, his bright eyes alight with interest and dark curls an unruly mess, than it is to actually interact much with Harry and Alyssa themselves. He glances at them once, and regrets it, seeing Alyssa’s arm snugly around Harry’s waist, face tilted up expectantly for a kiss that Harry grants without, it seems, any thought. It’s too soft, intimate, sweet. Nick just can’t.

Nick thinks the wealth of mornings on air with horrendous hangovers, or working through some of the most horrifically shit days of his life, is the only way he gets through the lunch with Harry and Alyssa sat across from him.

They sit and make small talk that tortures him, easy chat that he’s exemplary at breezing through. As much practice as Nick has had would make anybody an expert in talking shit.

There’s a tension despite that. A tension Nick cannot rid from the situation. He may be able to push past it and get on with it, but Harry can’t and it’s grating. Harry fumbles through the conversation, burying his difficulties in feeding James, bright eyes never making contact with either Nick or Alyssa. He leaves Nick entirely, in the deep end talking to his bloody _wife_ and trying desperately hard not to dislike this beautiful, charismatic woman. He wants to hate her, but she isn’t the gleaming high fashion skinny hipster that Nick had half dreamed her up to be. She just isn’t, she’s down to earth and warm and so lovely. Nick is not into women, but he’s not blind, nor is he foolish – he can see without much difficulty how Harry must have fallen in love with this girl.

The easy ways she touches Harry dig at him despite it, the light brushes of her hands over his shoulders, his hair, just in passing, and then the soft endearments that fall from her mouth. They are so familiarly intimate, and open, that Nick’s chest kind of hurts with it.

This, this stupid big house and beautiful baby, it’s what Nick wanted from Harry _five bloody years ago._ It’s what he still wants. It’s not fair.

They’ve finished the soup and cleared it away when James starts to wail angrily about nothing in particular. Alyssa scoops him up with a soft apology and starts to try calming him, pacing back and forth aimlessly. Harry makes a slight face.  
“You want me to take him?” Harry offers, ringed fingers drumming a slow rhythm on the granite countertop. Alyssa waves him off.  
“No, no baby, it’s fine, I’ll go for a walk with him. He’ll drop off soon enough and I can walk off lunch a little, and you and Grimmy can have a little lads time without us two around, I might even stop for a coffee somewhere.” The way she glances between Harry and Nick is telling. She’s not stupid enough to not realise something is up, that they need to talk. Nick can only pray, with a sinking nausea, that she doesn’t have any inkling _what_ exactly is causing the rift between them.  
“Alright, okay,” Harry concedes softly, padding off and dragging a pram out onto their front drive, adjusting the hood of it so James won’t be in the sun too much and wedging a baby bag in the storage underneath, “Just in case yeah?”  
“Thanks sweetie,” Alyssa smiles a little, shushing James and following Harry outside, bending down to tuck him into the pram securely, buckling him in. 

Shielding her eyes from the sun with a pair of oversized tortoiseshell shades, Alyssa slips her feet into shoes and tucks a mobile into her back pocket as she leans in to kiss Harry sweetly on the mouth with a soft goodbye. She brushes kisses to both of Nick’s cheeks as she did when she greeted him, and Nick hugs her lightly.  
“I’m sure I’ll see you again soon,” she insists warmly.  
“Yeah, sure,” Nick smiles back, “Thanks for much for the soup, proper nice having actual food.” Nick’s grin feels forced but she seems not to see it. 

Both Nick and Harry linger in the open doorway until Alyssa and James have vanished out the open front gate. Harry swings the front door closed with a hushed click.

“I should go, Harry,” Nick says, almost immediately. He doesn’t want to argue, he just wants to get away from all of this, pretend it isn’t happening. He’s good at that, totally burying his head in the sand and acting like the world doesn’t keep spinning - proper professional at it really.  
“I want to- to talk Nick,” Harry ventures slowly. Nick can’t answer him for a second with the sheer amount of anger and confusion bubbling up in his chest; he has to walk away, heading for the bright space of the kitchen.

Harry follows.  
“Please, I want to _talk_ about last night, I wasn’t… planning on lunch with her here and shit, Nick.” Nick can’t handle Harry at all right now. In a way that he’s not sure that he’s ever felt before, he really is _angry_ at his boy.  
“Let’s talk then, how about you, you _tell me_ , how you can sit here and play nice and kiss your _wife_ , when last bloody night you were kissing _me_.” The words burst out of Nick in a rush, leaving him feeling strung up and tense and a little out of breath. Nick looks at Harry then, turns and takes him in. 

Harry is standing with his broad shoulders slumped and his expressive face pinched in distress. Harry rubs at his mouth fitfully with his elegant ringed fingers and drags them through his hair in agitation. When he meets Nick’s gaze, there’s something a little wild about his eyes, the brightness of them not the usual lively warmth, instead there’s something _frantically_ bright about them, restlessly searching Nick’s face for something.  
“Because I still _want you_ , I don’t know _why_ , Nick, I just _do._ ” Harry sounds the kind of wretched Nick feels. Harry takes a few steps towards him, his bare feet silent on the tiled kitchen floor. “I still _care_.”  
“That’s not fair, you don’t get to. You _don’t get to_.” Nick is trembling, can feel his whole body shivering in anger and desperate tension. This isn’t fair. It’s not bloody fair. _Not fair_. “Haz, you _made_ your choice, you made it _years_ ago. You married this amazing bloody woman and you guys have a beautiful baby, and you don’t get to care about me like that. You can’t.”  
“I can’t _help it_.” Harry is closer again, determined sincerity written all over him.  
“You can,” Nick insists, his hand floundering out in front of him, warding Harry back. “I don’t want this,” he gets the words out, the ones Aimee made him repeat again and again, like if he says it’s enough it’ll be true. 

Nick hears Harry’s breath hitch quietly and it’s like twisting a knife in his bloody chest. Gentle fingers curl around Nick’s outstretched hand, folding his arm carefully back towards his chest. Harry is so close Nick can _feel_ him there, knows he’s that close without opening his eyes.  
“Do you- “ Harry’s voice is a low, careful rumble, a softness to it that Nick recognises as a horrible insecurity, it’s not unfamiliar, he’d just forgotten how it sounds on Harry, hasn’t heard it since his boy was an awkward teenager that didn’t quite believe his life was real. “Do you mean that? You don’t want me anymore? You don’t- “ Harry’s voice cuts off short again, and Nick hears his unsteady slow little breaths, can’t stand not looking at him anymore. 

Opening his eyes, Nick finds Harry so bloody close. Whenever Nick finds Harry like this, he ends up admiring him helplessly, drinking him in, but this moment, right now, seeing Harry is like a fist to the gut. His green eyes are searching Nick’s face, a sheen to them a little more emotion than Nick can handle, lips pursed in an unhappy expression. He’s beautiful, but to Nick Harry is always beautiful. What is more important, what’s impossible not to see, is that something about him looks a little like it’s cracking, splintering, his charming exterior wearing thin. The muscles in Harry’s cheek jump with each sporadic clench of his jaw.  
“Nick,” Harry ventures, voice thick with emotion, half of it anger, a frustration, that Nick shares, “fuck I- I miss you, I _want_ you, I think I still _love_ you.” 

That Harry has deigned to share words like that with Nick now, after so fucking long, after _everything_ , feels a little like a slap. Why couldn’t Harry say these things years ago, back when they actually could have meant something? Fuck. 

“Fuck,” Nick says. “Where was this five years ago?” Nick hears his own voice half laughing, all incredulity and bitterness, like his heart isn’t swelling and aching in his chest. _Still love you_. It means Harry has loved him, in the past, and Nick was never _sure_. Like, god, he _hoped_ , but hope it nothing compared to knowing. He still loves his boy, loves him like he always bloody did, and wants him with a yearning that eats away at Nick. And now, suddenly, someone has dumped the gift of a Harry that feels the same in his life, but it’s a Harry Nick can’t have. Everyone says he can’t have him, all the logic in the world says Nick can’t have him.

Harry is still looking at him, no answer forthcoming, nothing new.  
“Nick,” is all he says, defeat colouring his tone. Nick can’t do this. He can’t pretend, he can’t at all. Aimee is a bloody fool if she ever thought Nick could show restraint around Harry. Restraint flies mercilessly out of the window when Nick is confronted with his boy, always has, did from the first time they met and he saw that ridiculous bright, warm smile. Nick doesn’t think he’s a bad person, he just doesn’t know how to walk away from this again; he’s not that strong. 

Nick shakes his head even as he lifts his hands to bracket Harry’s face, closing the distance between them, tilting his head into a kiss. It’s the final straw on his guilt, the mess crumpling under the weight of what it is for Nick to take this for himself, but Nick doesn’t want to care about that for a minute, because he has Harry. _He has Harry_. 

Harry may well be a grown man, but the way he presses himself in close, grasps in such a needy manner at Nick, it hasn’t changed really, not since the first time. 

Nick finds it, in the back of his mind somewhere, almost unsettling that his hands still fit against Harry’s skin so easily. It’s like Nick expected the shape of Harry to be different under his palms, but it isn’t, not even a little. His thumbs press lines across the high shape of Harry’s cheekbones; drag down his jaw; the taut line of his neck; curl back into the loose tangle of his curls. Nick braces Harry against him with one shaking hand dropped down to the softness of his waist, skin warm under the thin cotton shirt, grasping fingers rucking up the material. 

Harry kisses just like he always has, soft giving mouth hot and open and insistent against Nick’s. Nick finds himself biting down on Harry’s plush lower lip just to garner a reaction, feeling the way Harry goes up on his toes a little to arch his body against Nick’s just that little bit more. The rings on Harry’s fingers are a slightly cooler interruption to the hot press of his large hand on the back of Nick’s neck, keeping him close. 

Harry’s skin has always run particularly hot, Nick notices his hands now, but remembers the feel of his whole naked body pressed achingly warm and soft against Nick’s forever ago. _All_ of Harry runs that warm. One of those steady hands presses against Nick’s lower back and it sears through his shirt, makes him shiver. 

They stop slowly, reluctant brushes of their lips together drawing it out, noses still pressed together, mouths barely a breath apart, exhaling in heavy, shaky, pants. Nick keeps his eyes closed, keeps his fingers tight in Harry’s hair. Harry’s hand on the back of his neck squeezes gently.  
“Fuck,” Nick breathes.  
“I missed you,” Harry returns, nudging lightly with his nose against Nick’s and brushing another soft kiss to his lips. It lingers a moment.  
“Missed you too popstar.” The guilt in Nick simmers under the giddy canter of his pulse, body trying to regain a little control, the singing note of pleasure running through him at _Harry_ , so _close_ , after _so long_.  
“I could kiss you forever,” Harry admits, mumbling and following through with another kiss, slow and so, _so_ easy to fall into, and maybe Nick loses himself for a little while in the tease of tongues and teeth and _Harry_. Reality has never been Nick’s friend though, not really. 

“Haz, hey, no,” he interrupts the kisses carefully, leaning away from the soft addictive press of Harry’s mouth and stroking his hand carelessly gently to Harry’s shoulder – though dragging it away from Harry’s curls is harder than Nick could have dreamt. “We shouldn’t… we shouldn’t be…”  
“But we are,” Harry says, a small line of a frown between his drawn brows, expression serious. “We’re supposed to be,” he adds, all solemn sincerity.  
“Supposed to be? What? Snogging in your kitchen?” Nick laughs faintly. This whole situation is so ridiculous he almost wants to cry. Aimee is going to be so furious at him, he’s furious at himself after all.  
“No, supposed to be an _us_ , me and you.” 

Those words falling from Harry’s lips stump Nick for a second and his brain turns them over and over and his bloody _knees feel weak_. He’s not a teenage girl, but every part of him is torn between tears and heart stopping happiness at Harry’s words. He resents the mess of feeling that Harry reduces him to. 

Because that’s just it, Harry reduces him to _feeling_. Logic and reality are absent, more so than Nick can normally function with, and he is left with the purity of feeling. Though perhaps purity is the wrong word, it’s a muddy, thick quagmire of not understanding and loving, loving, _loving_ all the same, cut through with veins of self-doubt, of anxiety, of frustration. Right now, too, it’s covered with an oily film of guilt, seeping into every space between the good and the bad and the unnamed – inescapable. 

“You’re married,” Nick says. It’s the first thing that tumbles out of his mouth and he doesn’t stop it.  
“I know, I don’t love her like I- like I love you.” Nick has to step away from Harry then, has to somehow distance himself from his gorgeous boy, spilling out everything he ever wanted to hear from him.  
“You sound so sure.”  
“I am, Nick, I’ve been half in love with you since I didn’t really get what that felt like.” Nick makes a slightly incredulous sound.  
“Haz, I, fuck I want to believe you yeah, but we haven’t even talked for like, _five years_ , and now you’re telling me you love me?” 

Problem is really, Harry’s words bite a little too deep in the soft flesh of Nick’s insecurities. Why, in God’s name, would a boy like Harry love him? Even all these years on, Harry still has the world at his bloody feet; tight jeans, designer shirts, fancy boots and easy smiles, a pop prince still. Nick is an old, washed up radio DJ, clinging onto his Breakfast show spot, soon to move on he doesn’t doubt. What has Harry ever seen it him really? Nick can hardly fathom it. Why should this pretty popstar care for him? 

“I thought years might… might change things, but they haven’t, Nick.” Harry looks so earnest, so serious. Frank sincerity on him is both strange and horribly reassuring. “I just like, I see you and everything still feels the same. I feel like I have to impress you. You’re way cooler than I am, and you’re still just, like, smart and funny and kind and hot.” Nick laughs.  
“I really think you win the cool competition now,” he interjects weakly. Harry shakes his head, a wry half smile tugging at his lips, lopsided and soft.  
“I care about Alyssa,” Harry admits, wetting his lips and shrugging awkwardly, “but we… like, I do love her I guess, in a way, but not like I want to. Not like she deserves. If there wasn’t James, I wouldn’t have hesitated Grimmy, I would have left her. When she got pregnant, I told myself I’d make it work, that we’d be good together, and we’re okay, but I don’t think we’re in love.”  
“Sure about that popstar?” Nick queries gently, “She looks like she loves you.” Harry makes a face and shakes his head, looking down at his hands. Nick notices a touch belatedly that Harry is twisting at his wedding band in an agitated fashion, turning it and pulling it off up to his knuckle before nudging it back into place. Nick thinks the expression on Harry’s face is guilt.  
“Even- “ Harry clears his throat. “Even if she does, I don’t love her.”

Nick breathes for a minute, the silence between them drawing thin. He needs to take a second, the slow his heart and let the tangle of their conversation unravel in his muddled head. 

Nick is maybe willing to believe Harry, believe that Harry wants him, that he loves him, but it doesn’t change Nick’s unwillingness to break up this little family Harry has, this happiness. What if Harry changes his mind? What if this is a dalliance before Harry goes on to realise that the grass is not greener on the other side and Alyssa is what he wants? Christ, the thought is devastating, but Nick realises, that despite that, he’s still willing to let Harry figure this out, to let Harry fuck with his heart _again_. He shouldn’t be so eager for it, but Lord knows even this torture is better than not having Harry there at all. 

“Popstar,” he murmurs, breaking the silence, “I’m going to head home.” Harry’s expression cracks with a little panic and his hands reach for Nick. Nick lifts one hand to silence him, letting the other curl into Harry’s searching grasp. “Hey, look, I just. I should, but I’m not saying no Haz, I’m just saying think about it. I like hanging out with you, and with little James, we can do that. But you have to think about this for me, yeah? I won’t- I _can’t_ be a dirty secret. Figure it out, _talk_ to Alyssa, please. I’ve waited this long, I can wait some more.” Harry deflates a little, letting out the breath he was holding, the rush of words stemmed a little.  
“I will,” Harry assures him, voice holding a gravelly surety. “But before you go, can I…” 

Harry shuffles closer and tilts his head a little in a cautionary manner, angling slightly for a kiss, the searching brightness of his eyes meeting Nick’s and dipping down, hidden by dark lashes to look at Nick’s mouth. 

For a moment, the sight of him overlays with a memory of a similar moment, years and years ago, when Harry was a little shorter, and distinctly softer around the edges, the lines by his eyes gone, and the curling swoop of his hair a little in his face. His mouth is still the same pink curve, a little parted, and the same intense bright eyes meet Nick’s. Nick grasps at the memory like sand slipping through his fingers, trying to form it more solidly. Was that the first time they kissed or the second? Harry’s quiet ‘Can I?’ as he leant in…? The image trails away as fleetingly as it arrived, Harry’s face sliding back into sharp focus, as if through a camera lens, a little worn by age and serious, long curls framing his sharp jaw, eyes just as warm and lips just as soft. 

Nick feels like, after all they’ve said and done, stopping Harry now might be a little besides the point. He nods even as he dips his head to meet Harry half way, the kiss chaster by far than the previous ones they’d shared, but still lingering and soft and intimate. Nick’s heart stutters a quick staccato rush at the sensation.

Breaking apart feels less horribly impossible this time, and Nick allows himself the indulgence of squeezing Harry’s hand and smiling at him a little, raising his eyebrow. The hesitant smile and huff of amusement he gets in response, Harry’s dimple cutting a valley in his cheek, is worth it, and Harry lets go of him willingly this time, following Nick towards the front door and lingering whilst he slips on his boots and jacket.  
“Do you want me to call you a car?” Nick shakes his head.  
“Nah, I’m good popstar, I fancy a bit of a walk in the sunshine, I’ll wander a bit and grab a cab on a busier road.” 

Before Harry will let him out the front door, he kisses Nick again, just lightly on the corner of his mouth.  
“I’ll text you yeah? Or call or something?” Nick smiles.  
“You do that Haz, speak soon.” Nick slips out of the door past him, heading out the front gates as they swing inwards with a slight squeal. He glances back once, briefly, and Harry is watching him from the front door, leaning against the jamb and staring after him impassively. The metal gates shut behind Nick and it blocks Harry from view. 

As Nick walks, he wedges on his sunglasses against the glare of the afternoon, digging his phone from his snug back pocket but finding he doesn’t know what to say, or who he wants to say it to. How is he supposed to explain this anyway? Harry doesn’t love his wife, he loves Nick, always has? 

Nick is trying to hold on to the sincerity in Harry’s voice, but the niggling terrors that keep him company on a day to day basis are quietly reminding him that Harry cared little enough to leave him once, so why would this be true?


	5. got me where you want me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a terrible person for not updating??
> 
> In my defense, I was trying to write my dissertation and also Christmas happened. 
> 
> I'm back now and this chapter has somehow taken me forever and I'm super super sorry, but I hope you like it!! :)

 

_You got me where you want me come and get me come on_  
_You got me where you want me I surrender come on_  
_You got me where you want me come and get me come on, come on_  
_Surrender_

 

 

It’s not perhaps until the next morning, Rihanna playing in the background as Nick settles back in his chair between links, that Nick acknowledges something he supposes he knows already, deep down: he’s having an affair. He’s actively allowing himself to indulge in this with a married man. Nick huffs a little sound of bitter amusement and rubs his face tiredly. It’s an affair, he reasons, but not one that will stay being an affair, not for long, because Harry wants to leave her.

A niggling voice in Nick’s head echoes the thought again, _wants to_. He hasn’t yet though, has he, Harry is still very much married to a beautiful girl and Nick is… not supposed to be in the picture, is being trusted and let in as Harry’s _friend_. His lip curls in a little disgust at his own behaviour. Nick is an awful person, but he kind of already knew that bit.

He’s already had a text from Aimee, but has yet to reply. He knows he will have to tell her eventually, but he’ll admit to a heavy terror in his stomach thinking about it.

Aimee and Ian are the kind of people who have taken their vows, despite all their laughter and levity in life, with seriousness. Aimee had been horrified at the notion of even the kiss they shared and it’s like, Nick just knows she’s not going to understand if he tries to tell her about this, it’s not going to click for her. She’s totally mad and all for true love and going for your dreams and all that – Nick’s been on the brunt of her drunken and impassioned speeches and insistences before – but she won’t condone cheating, won’t support Nick allowing himself to be the shadowed third in someone’s marriage.

Rihanna trails off and is replaced by the opening notes of a newer song Nick’s not sure he knows the name of. It distracts him for a beat, head twitching up in interest from where his eyes had been fixed unseeing into the middle distance. The distraction doesn’t last long enough and Fifi shoots him a slightly questioning look, but seems unwilling to ask. He wouldn’t answer anyway and he thinks that she knows that.

He’s not cagey with her, with any of his work lot, but there are lines to what they know, and what they don’t, has to be, or things just get out of control. The Harry thing, it’s too private anyway, if he’s unwilling to talk to Aimee about it, then it really should be something he keeps totally to himself.

A part of him wishes it wasn’t someone like Harry, because then, even though it’s terrible, he could kind of… throw it out there. A few drinks in and his friends would be scandalised, but they’d look at it as objectively as they could, they’d try to support Nick, he knows that. They’d be pissed at him too, he’s sure, he knows them well enough not to doubt that, but it wouldn’t be this hard.

That’s the problem really, he reckons, with Harry being friends with all of his friends. They were Nick’s first though, and maybe that’s an irrational thought that he allows to rise to the surface, but it’s true, and something a little fierce in his chest is angry that because Harry’s charmed them all, he’s left with none of them he can truly confide what’s happened in, not really.

God his charming boy has made the best and worst kind of home in Nick’s life, it’s unfair, so very unfair. 

The constant whiplash of Nick’s own feelings is likely the reason for the niggling headache that begins to press at his temples as the breakfast show grinds on. He thinks he’s doing a good job at hiding his lack of interest or real focus for the sake of the listeners, but he’s not sure his co-workers believe it.

Nick is stuck so very badly, is all, on this idea that he and Harry are starting on – maybe already having? How do you define that? – an affair. He always thought they were kind of… illicitly _romantic_ and exciting ideas, albeit terribly cruel most of the time, but he never expected it to choke him up this way, chest tight and nerves frazzling ever more rapidly.

Alyssa and James play on his mind constantly, an irrepressible loop of their faces in his head. He’s splitting that up, potentially, isn’t he, by letting Harry do this. He should stop it, Nick knows he should but stopping it in theory is so much easier than stopping it in practice, because saying no to Harry is Nick’s least favourite thing.

It’s like- …Harry’s his kryptonite. He makes Nick weak, so bloody weak. 

Fuck, he acts like this is all Harry, but that’s crap. Nick knows it. It’s not all Harry, it’s _never_ been all Harry. It takes two to tango, that’s how the phrase goes right? Harry isn’t forcing this on Nick by any stretch of the imagination. Oh, he’s pissed Nick off a bit by pressing for a response, but Nick gave him that response willingly enough. Nick kissed him, Nick admitted to these feelings. That’s what it comes down to really. He’s complicit in this.

Nick hightails it from the BBC offices as soon as he’s able; begging off meetings with a headache he wishes was fictional throbbing at his temples.

He tumbles into his house, brushing off Pig’s exuberant affection to shuck off both coat and shoes. He feels like shit. A glance at his phone confirms that Harry has yet to contact him again and, crawling into bed under the soft embrace of a clean duvet, he half hopes for a beat that Harry won’t bother, he’ll realise what a terrible idea this is and he’ll leave Nick in peace, let him move on, finally.

Nick burrows his face into the cool pillow and closes his eyes, trying to let the chill softness of it soothe his aching head.

He wakes to Pig scrabbling pitifully at the side of the bed, paws scraping lightly on the duvet overhanging and Nick blinks his crusty eyes open slowly, squinting at her in the semi darkness of his room. She looks up at him imploringly, big eyes gleaming a little and bottom wriggling impatiently on the carpeted floor of his bedroom. Nick manages a half smile.

The throbbing in his head has waned and he makes sure it will stay that way with a couple of painkillers from his bedside table that he swallows dry with a grimace whilst swinging his legs out from the bed.

After sleeping with his clothes on, he feels peculiarly chill out of the cocoon of his duvet and shuffles his way downstairs with Pig at his heels. Finding the day half gone with how long he slept, he opts to give up entirely, figuring there’s nought to be done but try again tomorrow.

 

* * *

 

 

Harry said he was going to text. He doesn’t.

Friday night finds Nick half way through a bottle of wine and curled up on a sofa between Pixie and Alexa. Douglas is dozing in an armchair and Daisy is curled up with Pig in a blanket on the floor. Aimee is sitting on Ian’s lap sunk into a lazy boy beanbag. The scene is reasonably tranquil for their habits and Nick reckons it’s probably because they’re more than a little bit drunk.

The bright glare of the television gives all of their faces a bluish cast as they half concentrate on the unfolding events of ‘PS. I Love You’, and from the floor where Daisy is clutching Pig, Nick hears a distinctive sniffle.  
“Reckon he’s a bit trying too hard in this,” he ventures idly, slurping his wine.  
“What’s that now?” Aimee demands, tearing her eyes from the screen to squint at Nick. Nick gestures vaguely with his wine.  
“Gerard Butler, obviously. Better when he’s just being all beardy and older in’t he.” He hears a hum of agreement from Alexa beside him. Daisy snorts a little wetly and half rolls over to look up at him.  
“Doesn’t matter, still _dead._ ” That effectively drags the conversation to a halt but Nick can’t help a giggle.  
“Sorry babe, won’t mention it again, but you know it’s just the character that dies right?” Daisy twists around to slap at his leg and Nick grins, settling back.

The doorbell ringing disturbs the comfortable quiet of the film. Nick frowns and nobody moves. He’s not expecting anyone else to join them is the thing, but he awaits some sort of announcement from one of his friends to explain the arrival.

He wouldn’t put it past them, someone inviting another half or something similar like that. It’s always a bit of a free for all at his house, anyone who wants to be there invited to be - open door policy and all that. He likes the company so it’s no real hardship to let people keep coming round, watching his TV with him, eating his food, drinking his booze, sharing his bed for a night. It’s not as good as it used to be, not as frequent, not with the busy schedules all his favourite people have now, the frantic, family oriented, career driven existences that Nick seems to lack still. He doesn’t mind that necessarily, but he wishes they would still keep him company more often, not once in a while. Nights like this one are few are far between.

The doorbell chimes again, grating in the quiet room.  
“Gonna answer that Grim?” Pixie asks, nudging him, her eyes glued to the screen. Nick frowns and huffs a little.

Getting to his feet is more of a task than he’d like, joints cracking in protest and lower back twinging. He groans softly and pats Pixie idly on the head as he shuffles from the TV-lit room to the front hall and the loitering shadow refracted through the translucent door panes. Nick rubs a hand through his messy hair and opens the door.

He reckons he probably should have been expecting Harry, if he thinks about it. His boy stands there with his turned in toes and his half smile, hair scraped up into an untidy bun and a coat on despite the balmy evening outside.

Nick doesn’t invite him in, just looks at him, thinking of their friends in the next room and how much they know, and how much more they might figure out if Harry joins them, if he stays. He swallows and raises his eyebrows in his best impression of nonchalant surprise. He hopes his expression reads as questioning because he can’t quite seem to speak for the second.  
“Hey, sorry for just… dropping by, I just thought maybe… I wanted to see you, Nick.” Harry’s voice is low and warm, intimate in a way that digs hooks oh so sweetly under Nick’s skin. Harry takes a step in the door and Nick doesn’t move an inch. The soft sounds of a mumbled comment and a little laughter drift from Nick’s living room and his eyes flick towards the open door and back to Harry. “Who’s here?” Harry continues lightly, soft and inquisitive. Nick shrugs.  
“The, uh, the normal lot,” he manages, clearing his throat a little self-consciously. “Mind if I join?”

Nick isn’t sure he can say no, not when Harry is already hanging up his ridiculous winter coat – it’s July Styles, he wants to say, why do you even have that? He closes the door behind Harry as his boy toes off his battered Chelsea boots.  
“Suppose so,” he murmurs as Harry wanders into the living room unprompted.

Nick hangs back a minute in the hallway, closing his eyes, heart pounding a strange and unsettling rhythm in his chest. His hands clench and relax restlessly at his sides and he exhales a heavy breath, counting it out.

Why turn up like this, what was the point in it? What had Harry expected? What if Nick had been alone? Fuck. That would be a bloody thing.

He rejoins his friends before his absence is noted as significant. He’s already hesitated too long.

Nick can’t stand it is the problem. Harry being there, that is.

When the film ends, a reasonably good-natured fight ensues over what is being put on next. Harry interjects occasionally with low teasing comments and little laughs, sprawled on the floor with his back against the sofa front, bare feet on the edge of Daisy’s blanket and Alexa’s hands in his hair.

He’s no longer sporting the bun he arrived with, his long hair hanging loose around his face, dotted with tiny plaits that sit oddly amongst the curls. Alexa is working on yet another, a half smile curving her mouth, when Nick escapes.

Harry keeps looking at him is the thing, checking to see if Nick laughed like the rest of them, checking to see if Nick is looking back. It’s making his skin crawl, not like, in a creepy way, just in a too close sort of way. It’s hard to escape his boy’s serious green eyes when he’s locked on to you, like honing signals, tractor beams. Everything Harry is sinks hooks into Nick and hauls him closer, closer closer closercloser. Nick isn’t sure if its not pulling him right off a cliff, frankly.

He edges out of the room under the half pretence of finding more wine and something to eat. He will find wine, undoubtedly, but he won’t eat, not with his stomach all twisted up like it is.

Aimee finds him in the kitchen, nudging the door to the corridor closed behind her to muffle the crows of victory and cackles of laughter from their friends. Nick grimaces at the expression on her face. Aimee _knows_ him, and sometimes, it’s the actual worst.

“You didn’t invite him,” she states, sipping red wine from her glass and raising an eyebrow. Nick opens his breadbin like he might find the answer there. He doesn’t, weirdly enough. Shame that, carbs hold so many of life’s answers, but apparently not this one.  
“No, course not. Why would I? Complicated enough as it is, in’t it? Without him just… being here.” Aimee huffs.  
“What’s happening with him Grim?” she asks, firm but gentle. Aimee is really hard to brush off when it comes to this, really she is. He tries though.  
“Nothing,” he assures her, “we’re just… figuring things out.”

It’s the biggest understatement of his life and a part of Nick is absolutely sick that he’s dodging around the subject like this with here- it’s _Aimee_ for god’s sake but- But he can’t, he knows that. 

She looks back at him askance, clearly utterly disbelieving of his brush off, one immaculate brow perfectly arched. His chest clenches a little in a nervous, uncomfortable way that makes him simultaneously want to spill his soul out to her for approval and also to scarper. He does neither, just lets the acidic unpleasantness of it sit. It kind of feels like penance for lying to her this way, the discomfort, like maybe he deserves it for being so secretive when she’s his best bloody friend.

“Don’t lie to me Nick,” Aimee responds eventually. “I don’t care if you think I’m gonna hate it or whatever, say you’re not talking about it or tell me the truth. Don’t lie. I can see straight through you, babe.” Nick’s cheeks flush in discomfort and he fiddles with a bottle opener from the sideboard. Aimee sighs heavily. “I love you Grim, even if I’m mad about what you’re getting into here. I’m here to talk if you need me.” She pads over to him and Nick feels like he can’t even swallow down the rush of feelings, guilt and gratitude for this amazing woman who somehow considers him a friend. When she tugs him down to kiss his cheek, he lets her do so mutely, lips unable to turn up in a smile when she smiles at him a little sadly, nabbing a bottle of white from by his elbow and heading back into the main room without him.

Nick covers his face with a large hand, eyes closed.  
“Shit,” he mumbles to himself, huffing a short breath, too bitter to be a laugh, the ‘ha’ a curt hollow sound. He shakes his head. Aimee knows, she knows exactly what is happening here and that is both a horrific concept and a relief. Maybe she can somehow make Nick make sense of all this bullshit.

 

* * *

 

Making sense of it is not the phrase that Nick would use for what’s been happening. Aimee’s watchful eyes have rarely strayed from Harry, keeping close watch on him. Nick’s not sure how much Harry’s noticed, but Nick himself can’t not. Bloody Aimee.

Pixie and Alexa leave together, hauling a sleepy Douglas between them and piling into a cab in the cool street some time around midnight. Nick waves them off with a light, “Bye, bye buh-bye.” Pixie laughs and blows him kisses as Alexa tries to persuade Douglas to wear a seat belt.

Nick ducks inside as the cab pulls away with the muted growl of an engine, the sound dying to silence as the street is once again empty of life. He finds Ian loitering in the corridor, spinning car keys on his fingers in agitation.

“Alright?” Nick asks, frowning a little. “You and Aims off then?” Ian clears his throat quietly and shrugs a little.  
“Uhm, maybe, when she’s uh- ready.” Ian jerks his head minutely towards the lounge and Nick hears the sharp tone of Aimee’s hushed voice.

Part of him immediately wants to burst in a cease whatever she’s talking to Harry about – because he knows they’re talking – but he also wants… he wants to let her have this. Nick knows she’s pissed at him for doing this, at Harry too, and she probably really needs to get all the anger off her chest. He wonders what’s already been said when he wasn’t there, wasn’t listening. Ian is indicating nothing but discomfort, through that isn’t a particularly reassuring sign.

“You are not fair to him,” he hears her say succinctly. The silence following is heavy and Nick can imagine his boy’s serious, silent stare. “Don’t look at me like that, you’re not. You’re yanking him about on a leash Styles, because he loves you and he can’t walk the hell away.” Harry clears his throat a little.  
“I’m not trying to jerk him about Aimee,” he insists. “I want this, him… us. “  
“What does your wife think about this?” Aimee’s voice is just as acerbic as Nick thought it would be. This is an affair she will never approve of.  
“That’s complicated.”  
“Is it?” She laughs. “He deserves better than this. Go home Harry, to your wife.” Nick can almost see the scathing expression on her face, the distaste at it all. He can imagine Harry’s stubborn jaw too.  
“I’m not leaving. This is none of your business.”

Nick can’t listen to them anymore. He steps into the doorway, nudging it open. They both turn their heads to look at him, Aimee with her arms folded across her chest, posture tense and unhappy, Harry perched on the arm of an armchair, tense too, but not the way Aimee is, so much better at hiding it after all these years in front of cameras, after so much time pretending to be okay.

“Stop it,” he demands, shorter than he intends to be, a little drunk, a lot tired, nerves strung tighter than a bloody harp in his chest, each frisson of anger between the people he cares about strumming a careless jangle of sound through him. “Aims, Aimee love, go home.” Aimee’s expression twists, not softening exactly, but flinching almost, something sad and pitying in her face.  
“Nicholas, babe-“ Nick shakes his head.  
“Just, please hun, it’s okay, just go home, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Her shoulders drop in defeat and she looks at Nick for a long moment before she moves towards him, wrapping him in a short tight hug and kissing his cheek.  
“Okay,” she murmurs, “text me.” Nick grunts his agreement and lets her slip out past him, hears the front door snick closed slickly behind her and Ian as they leave.

Nick exhales a breath he didn’t realise he was holding and lets his gaze slide to Harry – who is already staring at him.

In the half lit room, telly a flickering glow on a muted menu loop, Harry’s eyes are feline and luminous, the blue screen light almost eclipsing the green of them. Nick’s breath almost catches at the bloody intensity of his stare, the way he looks at Nick like he _means_ something. It’s a possessive grasping look, one with clawed hands that are so gentle you don’t fight. Nick should tell Harry to go home too, but the words don’t leave his mouth.

Instead he just turns away, escaping like he’s been trying to all bloody night, the corridor a suffocating dark space. Harry follows him.

Nick knows he’s going to do it before he does logically, but he still somehow held a hope that he wouldn’t, that Harry would let him walk away for once, walk away from this whole difficult fucked up situation just for five minutes. Harry’s presence behind him isn’t looming so much as it’s just overwhelmingly present. Harry shuffles up behind him, their clothes brushing a little and Nick’s struggling to breathe properly somehow, paused as he is, arms hanging limply by his sides.

Harry’s hands hover and settle uncertainly on Nick’s hips, anchoring warmth and weight on his skin, stopping him from simply drifting away from all this. It brings him back.  
“Haz,” he ventures slowly, voice too loud in the quiet, “you should… we should…” Should what? Nick’s not even bloody sure anymore, all he knows is that this is all so stupid, and it’s all because he’s disgustingly desperately in love with this beautiful boy, and he doesn’t know what to do with that.

Harry shuffles in closer and presses up against Nick’s back, so solid and broad. Nick’s breath catches. Harry didn’t always feel this way, pressed against him, but it’s still familiar.  
“I don’t care,” Harry mumbles back, face pressing into the juncture of Nick’s neck and shoulder, soft messy curls brushing Nick’s jaw and the soft, wet drag of Harry’s lips on his skin settling a heat low in his stomach, sparking an interest in the confines of his jeans.  
“Jesus,” Nick breathes. He hears Harry make a soft, almost whiny sound, blunt teeth grazing Nick’s neck, then the pulling aching heat of suction and fuck, fuck that gets Nick a little hard, cock twitching. “You- I want-.“ Harry slides a hand around from Nick’s hip to the front of his jeans, long clever fingers splaying over his groin and palming him firmly through his jeans. Nick makes a short sound, a little ‘unh’, eyes closing. His hips twitch forward, chasing the pressure of Harry’s hand.

That little movement seems to spur Harry on in a way he needs, suddenly holding Nick tight to him, hand rubbing and squeezing Nick in an almost rhythm, biting kisses stinging up Nick’s neck and back down again towards his shoulder, Harry’s questing mouth pushing aside the collar of his shirt. Nick’s words have deserted him, but he groans again, eyes shut tight, riding on the waves of sensation.

Harry seems rapidly dissatisfied with Nick’s back turned to him, spinning him around a little impatiently, large grasping hands never leaving Nick’s body, close and clinging. They’re of a height these days, almost, and Harry’s endless stare is devastatingly close, darkly shadowed and lash lined. Nick surges forward first, he thinks, into a kiss that is almost more fight than it is want. Their teeth click and Nick’s lips hurt a little. They need it, the wet, slick battle of it, the frustration boiling over Nick in the way he sucks Harry’s lower lip into his mouth and bites down, the way he pushes, pushes, pushes, making Harry acquiesce to _his_ pacing.

Harry pushes, short back nails biting into the skin of Nick’s back beneath his shirt, hauling him so close.

Nick can’t do this, but he can’t stop either. Not even a little.

He actually pushes then, physically pressing Harry back against the unforgiving surface of the hallway wall, wedging one thigh firmly between Harry’s and nudging _up._ Harry grunts a little and groans open mouthed against Nick’s mouth, panting hot damp breaths out with each torturous rub of Nick’s thigh. Nick can feel Harry’s hot hard length against him, can feel the way he’s gone pliant despite himself. Fuck. This is what Nick knows. He knows how Harry feels, how he tastes, how his beautiful boy falls apart.

It’s easy from there in a way that Harry and Nick have always been easy. Nick keeps that pressure with his thigh until Harry rocks needily against it himself, chasing the feeling and the friction and the heat. They kiss like somehow wanting enough will change things. Nick’s hands on Harry are greedy, so very greedy, rucking up the soft loose shirt that hides his chest, his waist, his hips, squeezing reddened marks onto the bony edges of him and the soft dips. Harry arches and presses and _wants_ just as selfishly, edging his own thigh against Nick’s groin and swallowing his reactions in panting open mouthed kisses.

They’re like breathless teenagers, too busy caught up in how good, _how good_ , to care for the complications of buttons or zips. Their clothes remain on and the hiccup of breath and quiet; “Nick, _Nick, fuck_ ,” Harry gasps out, low and rasping, it’s all enough, somehow, spurs Nick onward to chase his own end, and finds it briefly mind-numbingly brilliant, his bones turned to lead and feathers all at once, until the unpleasant sensation of sticky wetness in his boxers begins to irritate him.

They stand in Nick’s dark front hallway holding onto each other with sweat cooling on their skin, lips brushing in distracted little catches of softness, of breaths. Nick’s brain reboots slowly.

Harry nuzzles lightly at Nick’s nose after a moment and makes a soft tired sound, then he buries his face affectionately in the join of Nick’s neck and shoulder, tangled curls a little sweat damp and messy. Nick strokes the back of his head lightly and exhales slowly, fingers teasing absently through the knotted mess of it.

Something about the moment is surreal to Nick. He feels like it might as well be another time and place, a different them. The soft way Harry is trying to fold into him is like before, when they were both younger, when Nick actually seemed a bigger person to Harry.

“H,” Nick manages eventually, voice low and rougher than he expects it to be. “We should clean up and get some sleep yeah?” Harry draws away slowly and straightens with a grimace and a nod. “Go um, go shower first. I best let the dog out and lock up, I’ll be up in a minute.” Harry pauses a moment, like he’s unsure. Nick needs him to head upstairs though, to gift that brief moment of being alone, respite from the company he’s had all day. He goes though, after a moment, brushing a kiss to Nick’s cheek and padding upstairs bare foot and not at all quiet, rings making a soft scraping clattering sound on the banister.

Nick lets Pig out for a wee, refrigerates the leftover wine, flicks off the lights. His jeans are uncomfortable and he’s dying to clean up, but he does his evening lock up routine on autopilot. He doesn’t want to think right now, not when the consequences of doing so will result in so much distress.

 

* * *

 

After a shower, Nick feels human again. He leaves his bathroom dressed in clean boxers and an oversized shirt, sight settling on Harry already in his bed, slightly damp hair scrunched up in a top know and body fully under the covers. Nick will be surprised if he’s wearing more than boxers. He crawls into his bed despite it, exhaustion dragging at his bones like dead weights.

He’s too tired to think about it or question the instinct when Harry gravitates immediately towards him, warm body pressing in close. Nick closes his eyes and allows himself the luxury of spreading his hands over the dip of Harry’s soft waist and the curve of his back. He drops a kiss to Harry’s temple, his forehead, then just between his brows. Harry’s lips twitch up faintly on one side and he mumbles a soft, “Night Nick,” the softness of it intimate and close in a way dry humping in a corridor somehow wasn’t.  
“Sweet dreams Haz,” Nick returns, closing his eyes to it all and surrendering for the time being, just letting himself have the moment.

**Author's Note:**

> Hang out with me on my main tumblr [yourprincesscharming](http://yourprincesscharming.tumblr.com) or on my fanart tumblr [popstar-vs-radio1](http://popstar-vs-radio1.tumblr.com/).


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